Chapter XXXIII…

Chapter XXXIII

CHALLIS'S INSIPID RETURN HOME. WHAT HAD IT ALL BEEN, THIS DREAM? OLD LINKS WITH BYGONES. HOW CONFESS, AND TO WHAT? OF A FIRE GOD GAVE FOR OTHER ENDS

Mr. Challis gave Lord Felixthorpe's chauffeur half-a-sovereign when he was landed at the Station. This was because he stood in such awe of that great man that he doubted if so haughty a soul would brook a tip at all. However, it not only brooked it, but changed it immediately for nine shillings in silver and eightpence in coppers and a glass of bitters at the Barleymow, opposite the Station. So Challis felt easy, and wondered to himself that so small a matter should disquiet him, with all his great perplexities on hand. How on earth did Napoleon Bonaparte contrive to exist?

However, all the perplexities came back in force as soon as he was off; indeed, he was almost sorry no small distraction occurred during his flight home. For he was alone nearly all the way to Euston; the many who nearly entered his carriage seeming to condemn him on inspection, and choosing every other carriage on its merits. The porter who put his valise on a cab at the terminus seemed callous and preoccupied; and the driver, when told to go to the nearest Metropolitan Station, struck him as too unsympathetic when he said: "Which will you have--King's Cross or Gower Street? It don't make no difference to me," not without some imputation of weakness of character. Also, this cabman appeared to form a lower opinion of his fare when the latter chose Gower Street than he would have had he chosen King's Cross.

By the time Challis had described a large segment of the Inner Circle, and had waited a quarter of an hour at Gloucester Road for a Wimbledon train, he had resolved that nothing would ever induce him to try that route again. Then a distasteful thought struck him:--should he ever make the same journey again? "Much better not," said he to himself; and kept on repeating it to himself till he had found his seat in the Wimbledon train, the gear of which caught the phrase, and seemed to repeat it to itself all the way to East Putney.

He had wired to Marianne: "Am coming home on business may come to lunch but don't wait Titus." The "may come to lunch" struck him as making this "business" seem plausible, without definite disingenuousness. He wanted to account for himself, and to make his sudden return a very matter-of-course occurrence. One thing was odd about it--and it was odder still that it never struck him as odd--that he should be so solicitous about not giving his wife an unnecessary start. He was just what he had always been in respect of his constant consideration of Marianne's comfort in small matters, and had never admitted to himself that his affection for her had varied as a necessary result of his infatuation for Judith. Had it done so, of necessity? It may not have--or it may. Psychological problems need not occupy a narrative of facts. This is one that might easily land us in an attempt to formulate an exact Definition of Love. Better beware in time! Leave the question in a condition of Metaphysical Equilibrium.

How Challis would have welcomed, just at this turning-point of his relations with Marianne--scouting as he did the idea of a rupture, so far--a thorough heart-whole accolade at the front garden-gate of the Hermitage! What an all-important factor in the moulding of the days to come would have been an unqualified, unmitigated, unreserved embrace--even before the cabman! Such a one as Penelope would have given Ulysses, if he had come back recognizable: a greeting to send the memories of all Calypsoes flying like chaff before the wind! Yes--even the appearance of Penelope on the threshold, revealing that Ulysses was just in time for lunch, only he must make haste, as it had been kept back to the very last minute, and he must keep all his news till afterwards. Any little thing of this sort--a note, spelt anyhow--a scribble on the slate in the hall, where you can write messages if there's a pencil--the slightest tradition of a consciousness of tea-to-come on the part of the departed, when departing--even a caution that you are not to spill, because it's a clean tablecloth--anything, in fact, rather than the dull, neglected, flat reality of Challis's return!

Remembering how his last arrival at home had fallen through, he had organized a surprise in his own mind. He had so light a valise this time--one carries less wardrobe in hot weather--that it would be no encumbrance. He would discharge his cab, and let himself in with his latchkey.

The cabman's expression was one of dissatisfaction with his career, but acquiescence in fifty-per-cent. beyond the tariff. He said it was coming on a drizzle, and drove away. Then Challis had to give up the surprise. For the garden-gate was shut to and locked--"because of the boys," no doubt--and he had to ring. He kept his finger on the electric bell, to show that his mind was made up as to coming in; whereupon Harmood appeared bearing a key. Challis did not complain that she had not kissed him, but he did think she might have been warmer.

"Mrs. Challis never said, sir," was her brief testimony in reply to "Where was your mistress going?" The uncompromising roughness of "your mistress" may have widened the gulf between them. A suggestion that perhaps Mrs. Steptoe knew was met by the concession, "I could ask Mrs. Steptoe." Delay then resulted, as Mrs. Steptoe, though absolutely in ignorance, wished to produce a sort of meretricious effect of giving information, and had to make talk while she thought out spurious data.

"No, sir, I couldn't say Mrs. Challis ever said a word to me, not this morning. Not if you was to ask. But yesterday morning she did say, 'ash what there was of the chicken, and stew the scrag-end of the neck for the kitchen-dinner to-day...."

"Well!--and did she say where she was going? That's the point."

"I was coming to that, sir!" Mrs. Steptoe was reproachful. "The scrag-end of the neck for the kitchen-dinner to-day, because she might be going to Tulse Hill. And the young ladies would certainly be going to Mrs. Eldridge's all day. And this morning she says to me to have a piece of rump-steak in the house in case."

"In case I came." But Mrs. Steptoe had intended a complete sentence. Challis concluded: "That's where she's gone, I expect! And the children are away?"

"The young ladies, sir." Thus Harmood, the stickler for the proprieties. To whom Challis says, "Very well!--Get me some lunch--steak--anything!" and goes to his room to wash, leaving Mrs. Steptoe recapitulating.

* * * * *

Was ever a blanker home-coming? Challis began to suspect he would certainly make hay of his life, unless some deus ex machina came into it. Was he a dignus vindice nodus? He put the question aside to read accumulated letters, kept back by request. Then lunch was on table, and life seemed suddenly as usual. But no Marianne, so far!

The drizzle "it" had "come on" made a dreary outlook from the house, and a sense of the absence of the children a conscious cause of dreariness within. No consolation could be found in the distant voices of the two servants at loggerheads in the basement. "Probably one specific loggerhead," thought Challis, as he gave real thought and care to the filling of a pipe he meant to enjoy. Because a certain incisive repetition, which seemed to relate to the same theme, conveyed the idea of diametrically opposed opinions, intemperately advocated by street-door knocks. A lull would come when Harmood brought him a cup of coffee--fresh-made, he hoped--and he would then hint broadly that the discussion was needlessly audible. "Keep the kitchen-door shut" is the usual formula.

The coffee came. It was ower good for banning and ower bad for blessing, like Rob Roy; only certainly not so strong. So thought Challis to himself--all such thoughts are his, not the story's--as he submitted to it. But he found a satisfaction for the ban he had withheld, in an increased acerbity of manner in his allusion to the kitchen-door. He called it out to Harmood as she departed, having sipped the coffee in the interim. "Yes, sir," said Harmood, speaking as though butter would not melt in her mouth.

However, the kitchen-door closed, and the discussion went on as though both the knockers' families had had a baby. It would not interfere with the pipe.

What was all this that had happened? He found himself asking space this, as he watched the smoke curling away, and changing to the smell he meant to let out of the window before Marianne came back. Now that he was here again, in his old surroundings, he could live back into them, and think of that intoxication of last night--only last night!--as nothing but a strange, bewitching dream. Never was man more susceptible to surroundings than Challis. Turn where he might, some trifle or other brought back his old days to him.

There, upon the chimney-piece, in defiance of modern taste, were certain treasures that had never found a place on a dust-heap because of their various associations with "poor Kate." The parian candlesticks at either end--religiously mended whenever chipped, and one of them obliged to submit to a rivet--did he and Kate not buy them in Oxford Street, and were they not therefore precious? The Swiss haymakers, carved in wood, that were an early present of Marianne's to her sister, were they not--although, of course, they were not high art, and you might sneer at them--things Kate had valued, and on that account never to be discarded or forgotten? The ingenious ship under a glass cover, with chenille round its base, whose hull was muscle-shells, and whose rigging spun glass, was it not a precious inheritance of past ages, treasured with curses, because every time it was moved it tumbled over, and had to be taken from its shelter and made the subject of unskilful experiments with sealing-wax and gum-arabic? Each had its tale of a former time. And everything that said a word about Kate added a postscript about her sister.

Was it not as well that last night's folly or delirium should rank as a dream?--was it not best? If only Destiny could have become a visible Rhadamanthus and driven the nail home, saying, "Now that's settled, Mr. Challis, and you are not to see Miss Arkroyd of Royd again," and he could have believed all his experiences of the last eight months hallucinations! But he could not do so without a warranty, and a strong one. He happened to know that Royd Hall was still there, in Rankshire; and that a week-end ticket was sixteen and sixpence. Let him try to make a dream of that, with Bradshaw ready to rise in evidence and denounce him! He could not but fail, with all the facts against him, in an attempt to quench his memories; but the more dreamlike and unreal they seemed to him, the less guilty he felt of duplicity towards Marianne. Other men might not have felt so; but this is his story, and we must take him as we find him.

Would any other man in like case have fashioned, as he did, the rough-hewn incidents of a scene in which he should make a clean breast of the whole tormenting dream to his wife, get absolution, and be once more his natural self, with no reserves? How on earth should he set about it? that was the thought that started it. Suppose he succeeded in saying, "Polly Anne, I'm a bad, wicked man, and I've been making love to Judith Arkroyd, and forgetting my duty to the wife of my bosom and her kids," would Marianne know what would be a correct attitude for an injured matron under her circumstances? Would she be able to say, perjured and forsworn and betrayer, and hence!--ere she did some correct thing or other? Not she! But suppose instead she were to say, "Just one minute, till I've done with Harmood, and I shall be able to listen to you.... Now, what is it?" what on earth would he do then with the position? Say it all over again, or try a variation, "You see before you a guilty et cetera," or something of that sort? No, no!--that would never do. Why, part of the awkwardness of the position was that the word guilty would overweight the confession so terribly. None of the substantial conditions of broken marriage-vows had been complied with, and it really would be difficult to know exactly what to confess to. How could he know that Charlotte Eldridge--for, dramatist that he was, he knew that lady down to the ground!--would not have dismissed the case with, "You see, my dear, there really hadn't been anything!"

And all the while the worst of it was that, according to his own canon of morals, there had been everything. He had profaned the temple of Love, soiled the marble floor, torn some chaplet from the altar; done something, no matter what, that was making him a secret-keeper from his wife; that would make him flinch from her gaze. Were other men all like that? No, certainly not! But then, they were not milksops, but Men of the World. Also, they worshipped at another temple, down the road, those merry satyrs; a temple where Pan and Silenus had altars.

No doubt this analysis of his own case, that Challis makes as he gets on with that pipe--near its end now--and waits to hear his wife's cab at the gate, would have clashed a good deal with his seeming reckless speech among men; speech he was apt to get himself a very bad name by, among precisians! But he was made up of oddities and paradoxes. Is any light thrown on him by what he is reported to have once said: "I can't see that it can matter how many wives--or whatever you like to call them--a man has, if he doesn't care twopence about any of them, and they all know it"? The funny part of this creed of Challis's about marriage and his fellow-men was that it caused them to ascribe to him precisely the same morals that he had ascribed to them; and that each one of them, whenever he chanced to speak of it in confidence to anyone he was not on his guard against, always appeared to disclaim attendance at the temple down the road for himself, personally; and, in fact, to suggest that he, exceptionally, had common decency in a corner somewhere.

No man will ever know--one may say that much safely--how far any other man is like himself. He is pretty sure to invent a curious monster for his fellow-man to be, based on all his own worst propensities; but utterly ignoring that mysterious impulse to fight against them which he has the egotism to call his better self. He credits himself, personally, with an inherent dislike of evil, and conceives that his fellow-man is kept in check by the Decalogue. He ascribes Original Sin to the race, and credits himself secretly with a monopoly of Original Virtue.

But it is unfair to go on moralizing in this way, merely because Marianne does not come back. The justification is that Challis spent such a long time in useless self-torment over his position; he all the while believing quite sincerely that real men of the world--say, broadly speaking, Mr. Brown and Lord Smith--practised double-dealers that they were in all that relates to womankind, would have dismissed the whole matter with an experienced smile. In the course of an hour, however, he endeavored to imitate the spirited demeanour of Mr. Brown and Lord Smith, and went away to his room to write.

He had to acknowledge that he could not fix his attention as Mr. Brown and Lord Smith would have done; but he made a fair show of writing, too--felt he had got to work again! Marianne would be back to tea; he was glad of that. He was distinctly not at all sorry to find he was glad of that. But he was a little annoyed that it had occurred to him to make the discovery--that he had not left the question dormant.

The noise in the kitchen below was almost inaudible in Challis's room, but a sense hung about of the remains of an engagement elsewhere. Challis was conscious that a dropping fire stopped when he rang the bell at four-thirty, to tell Harmood not to get the tea till her mistress came back. Harmood consented, provided that the obnoxious expression was withdrawn. Only she did not put it that way. What she said was, "To wait for Mrs. Challis, sir?" Had Challis answered, "Yes, your mistress!" she might have shown a proper spirit. But as he said, with discretion, "Exactly!" Miss Harmood consented to postpone tea. His phrase seemed to admit inexactness in the epithet "mistress."

But the young lady was going to make no suggestions. If Mr. Challis liked to go without his tea, let him! She was not going to attempt to influence anybody. The hours passed, and ink that might have perished on a penwiper became a permanent record of thoughts which their writer always doubted the value of the moment after writing them. But perhaps they were immortal? No one would ever know till the very end of Eternity.

Was that actually six o'clock? Well--she wouldn't come now till dinner! He considered a short walk before she turned up; but the drizzle was one of those all-pervading drizzles that despise umbrellas, and do the garden a world of good. One never goes out for a walk in those drizzles. He would have another pipe, and think it over--perhaps write a little more presently.

He would have done more wisely to write the little more at once--to remain hard and fast at his writing-table. For he had not been long over the second pipe when the summer sun, now on its way to roost, got a chance to peep through a cloud-rift, and straightway Wimbledon was aware it was the heart of a rainbow it could not see, however palpable it might be at Esher. Now, it chanced that just at the moment when the sudden prismatic glow flooded that vulgar, incorrigible drizzle, and clothed it in an undeserved radiance, Challis was watching the crystal beads that chased each other in a line along the under-edge of a sloping gutter above his window. He was wondering why they held on so tight--it was so seldom one dropped--when on a sudden they all became jewels, each with a little complete image of the sun in it, if they would only have stood still while one looked! And these jewels brought back a something to his mind. He felt it coming before he could define it: what was it going to be? Why, of course!--the gleaming beads or scales or spangles on Judith's dress, last night in the little garden with the funny name--what was it?----Tophet.

And then it all came back with a rush. He had contrived, in his home-surrounding, to dodge and evade, as it were, his memory of his folly of last night for a moment. He had now slipped unawares into his past; and malicious recollection had brought back this-and-that that was pleasant in it, but had closed the door against reminders of all that had been tedious and distasteful in his later married life. With no Marianne there in the flesh, to call attention to that morose and jealous temper she had developed in these later years, he had indulged in the luxury of forgetting it; and had repeopled the empty house with a cheerful version of its mistress, one that was exactly what the Marianne of old ought to have grown up into--not very clever, certainly--not Madame de Staël, by any means--but always good-humoured and ready to laugh at her own blunders, and gradually outgrowing that terrible vice of blood, that dire form of Christianity that made it a wonder to him how his new friend, that good parson-chap at Royd, should be tarred with the same feather. He had got into a backwater of the stream of life, and found a happy anchorage for a moment; and here came the torrent he had escaped, and caught him up and whirled him away with it, Heaven knows where! Little things make the great things of life, and no sooner was that miserable gew-gaw that was not even an expensive article brought across his mind by those jewel-drops flashing in the sun than he became again the heart-distempered victim of the image it brought with it--Judith in all her beauty, at its best in the moonlight. His incipient fit of reconciliation to his home had only been momentary, and the paroxysm of his disorder that upset it--how rightly he had spoken of it as a fool's passion!--sent him pacing to-and-fro across the room, catching at the empty air with nervous fingers, pressing them mercilessly on his eyes, as though he would crush out with them the beautiful image of the woman that bewitched him.

This sort of thing is not so uncommon as you, perhaps, think. You have read of it, of course--best told by Robert Browning, perhaps--how "the Devil spends a fire God gave for other ends." That was like to be Challis's case if this went on.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXXIV

A BAD RAILWAY ACCIDENT. AND, AFTER ALL, MARIANNE WAS AT HOME. CHALLIS'S REPORT OF ROYD. BUT NO!--MARIANNE WOULDN'T HAVE JUDITH SLURRED OVER

Just as the cloud-rift closed and spoiled the rainbow a sound came of a cab approaching. Challis stopped in his restless pacing to-and-fro, and listened.... Yes!--the cab was stopping. That might be Polly Anne? The fact that his mind said "Polly Anne," by preference, showed that his relief at her arrival--for he was one of those who always fidget when folk are overdue--outweighed for the moment a feeling that he would be glad when he had passed the Rubicon of looking her in the face. He was conscious, though, as he ran downstairs to meet her, of a trace of the alacrity one shows as one enters the dentist's sanctum, to convince oneself one is really ready to have one's molar out. But before he got to the swing-round of the banister curve he knew it wasn't Marianne after all, this time!

Then, on the lower flight, he became conscious that it was that booby John Eldridge; saying, as one in indecision: "No--stawp a bit! I'll tell you in a minute," and then somehow contriving--as it were to fill out a pause for thought--a certain bubbling or wobbling noise, made with the end of his tongue between his lips. It was brief, for he soon added: "Suppose you was to tell him I was here! I can't see that any harm'll come o' that. What's your idea?"

But Harmood's idea, if she had one, remained concealed behind her professional manner; which was what the Sphinx's might have been, had the latter taken a house-and-parlourmaid's place. For, perceiving Challis on the stairs, she passed her visitor on to him without reply, merely saying: "Mr. Eldridge, if you was at home, sir." This formula left it open to her to cancel or ignore Mr. Eldridge if her employer thought fit to deny his own existence in the face of evidence.

"I am here," said Challis, descending. "Like the Duke's motto! Marianne isn't, but I'm expecting her every minute. Anything up?" This query related to a certain rosy uneasiness that hung about Mr. Eldridge's hesitation of manner.

"Oh no! No--nothing! Only Lotty said you were coming back to-day. Suppose we was to come in here!" "Here" was the front sitting-room, looking to the road. Harmood closed the street-door, and died respectfully away.

"By all means," said Challis. "Out with it, John!"

Mr. Eldridge struggled with obstacles to speech, which he endeavoured, by ostentatious clearing of the throat, to refer to chronic bronchitis. At last he got to "Mind you, Master Titus, it's ten to one there's nothing in it! But I thought it just as well to look in and tell you." Challis waited, with an ugly misgiving growing on him, till two words with a shock in them came, blurted out by the speaker, whom they left perturbed, mopping his brow and polishing his nose with his handkerchief. "Railway Collision!" said Mr. Eldridge. "Bad job! But don't you run away with the idea that...."

"That--that she--Marianne...."

"Ah! Well!--I tell you, Master Titus, I don't believe she was in the train."

"You know nothing about it! Why didn't you stay to find out?" Challis finds natural irritation with this booby's method an easement against the new strain on his powers of bearing anxieties. One good point about which is that Judith and Royd Hall vanish with a clean sweep. Face to face suddenly with a hideous possibility, that Marianne may be killed or maimed for life, he is completely back in his old life again, and knows nothing outside the tension of the moment. In a very few seconds he sees that his informant does know nothing; having evidently, when he witnessed or heard of this accident, become the slave of a singular and not uncommon idea that the sooner ill news is heard the better, and having rushed off with his without waiting for details or confirmation. Challis gives him up as quite useless as an informant. "Your cab's there?" he asks. And receiving an affirmative says with decision: "Wait till I get my boots on!"

Mr. Eldridge throws a bit of good counsel after him as he runs upstairs three steps at a time. "Don't you get in a stoo, Master Titus! Easy does it." He then retires into the parlour, and fidgets, variously. He drums on surfaces that offer themselves, feels about on his razor-farm for interesting incidents, whistles truncated tunes that do not last to identification-point, and frequently repeats, "Nothing to go by--nothing to go by--nothing to go by!" shaking his head and looking profound, till Challis comes quickly downstairs. He calls out to Harmood in some remote background that he is going out, and doesn't know when he'll be back.

The cabman is good for information, and coherent. A petroleum explosion on the train from Haydon's Road. Just coming into the Station, and hadn't slowed down enough. Guard injured--couldn't apply the brake. Train ran beyond platform, and collided with truck, shunting. What did they want to be shunting trucks for, with the train just due? Anyone might have known there might be a petroleum explosion, and the guard not be able to apply the brake. Or anything else, for that matter! Anyone hurt? Oh ah, yes!--people enough hurt, if you came to that. All right! You two gents, if you jumped in, should be at the Station in no time.

Did you ever have the ill-luck to be the seeker after a possible casualty in a railway accident? If you have you will be able to guess what Challis went through in the hour that followed. Fortunately for him, the crucial moment of inspection of the bodies of two women unknown, for identification, was soon over. To a certainty, neither was Marianne. So also the few cases too bad for immediate removal were soon decided about--some without visiting them; these having been able to give their names. And if Marianne had been among those who had started for home, whether injured or scot-free, she would have been met on the road. They would have been sure to see her, or she them.

Moreover, there were not many people in the train, and Mrs. Challis was well known at the Station. She was a constant passenger by this line, going to Tulse Hill via Streatham. The officials at the Station felt sure they would have seen her had she been in the train. No other train would follow for some time that Mrs. Challis could possibly come by. Probably she had missed her train at Tulse Hill. Good job too, for her, said public opinion.

So Mrs. Challis's husband, relieved, but with a swimming head, and very uncharitable feelings in his heart towards the originator of all this needless alarm, drove home beside that really very stupid person; and so far as his own condition of semi-collapse permitted it, gathered the story of his friend's share in the matter, and what he considered a justification of his action.

It appeared that Mr. Eldridge had accompanied his wife to Wimbledon Station, on her way to an evening appointment in London. As she was getting into the carriage, the train on the other line came in from Haydon's Lane. She said to her husband: "That's Marianne's train; she was going to Tulse Hill. You can drive her back in your cab. You'll find Titus at home. He was to be back to-day." Then, as her train left the platform, he saw a sudden blaze of fire from the guard's van of the other one; and the collision, as already described, resulted. A cooler or stronger judgment than John Eldridge's would no doubt have exhausted every source of information rather than jump at the conclusion that his friend's wife was necessarily among the injured because he could not find her among the survivors. His reasoning powers were not strong enough to stand by him through the panic of the scene that ensued, and he could see nothing for it but to convey the news of the supposed disaster to her husband.

Challis was inhospitable enough not to press him to come in and dine, and was so annoyed with his folly that he might not have done so even if less desirous of a quiet evening with the subject of all this alarm, who would no doubt appear in due course, though the best part of an hour late. He felt secure that nobody could be connected hypothetically with one mishap, and actually with another, on the same evening! Impossible! Mr. Eldridge seemed not so confident; for he said at parting, "Good-bye, Master Titus! Glad Marianne wasn't killed by this train!" and drove off to his own domicile.

The garden-gate was not locked; this was owing to Challis's return. For he always insisted that the front-door should be approachable, boys or no, when he was in residence. He got in with his latch-key, and going straight to the top of the kitchen-stairs, called out to Harmood, whose response came duly.

"Tell Mrs. Steptoe she must keep dinner back. Your mistress will be late."

"I beg your pardon, sir!"

"Tell--Mrs.--Steptoe she must keep--dinner--back!" Challis endorsed his mandate with forcible word-isolations, and gave fuller particulars of his reasons why. Harmood responded rather tartly:

"I beg your pardon, sir! Did you say Mrs. Challis?"

"Yes!"

"Mrs. Challis is come in, sir. Been in half-an-hour!"

"God bless me!" exclaimed Challis; and nearly added, "Why didn't you tell me?"--which would have been absurd. But he was saved from this by a voice from the floor above; Marianne's, unmistakably.

"Oh dear!--What are you shouting down in the kitchen for? Why can't you come up?"

"I'm coming, dear! When on earth did you come in?" His salute was cordial. Hers was ... well!--she might have done better. But then, you see, she knew nothing about all this excitement that was afoot. And never forget that Mrs. Steptoe's legend of Ramsgate always hung in her mind.

"I've been in this past half-hour. Why did you go out again? It makes things so late."

"I'll tell you directly. How on earth did you get here?"

"How on earth did I get here?" It is slowly dawning on her that something has happened. "I drove from the Station. Just as usual!... I suppose that's the children."

"But how came we not to meet you?"

"Who?"

"John Eldridge and I--driving down to Wimbledon."

"How can I tell? I've not been at Wimbledon. I came from East Putney, as I told you, in a cab. You'd better get ready for dinner."

"All right! But how came you to come by East Putney?"

Marianne always had an irritating way of treating her husband as though he were inaudible and invisible. No doubt she meant no harm by it. But husbands do feel secretly nettled sometimes if they are, as it were, held in abeyance by a waved hand, to await the end of a colloquy they are excluded from. Challis felt, at least, that he was very good-humoured not to be nettled.

"What has made the children so late? I said no later than six." So spoke the lady, eliciting revelations of delay caused by the children hiding themselves. Due public censure of the offence followed.

* * * * *

Challis had become himself again by soup-time. "Well, Polly Anne," said he, "you've never told me how you came to go by East Putney!" The trifling excitement over the child had such a thoroughly old-world flavour with it that he was very much at home again, and Royd Hall had slipped away to dreamland.

"Oh, I?" Marianne is not ill-humoured now. But she is, to a certain extent, enduring her lot. You know how that's done? "A little bit of stopping came out of my front tooth, and I had to go up to Kensington to get it seen to. Of course, I hadn't written, and Roots and Leaver kept me an hour and a half."

"What did he have to do?... painful?..."

"Oh no--nothing! He put some fresh stopping. Only a few minutes! What took you to Wimbledon?"

"Well--you see!--our excellent friend John Eldridge came and told me you were killed in the accident at Wimbledon Station...."

"Oh! Was there an accident?"

"Yes. Nobody we know in it. But two women killed and several injured. It was petroleum." He gave particulars of the accident, dwelling on the fact that the wrecked train was the one his wife would have been in if she had not been at the dentist's. "But I was at the dentist's," she said, with a certain implication in her voice of "So I don't see what you have to complain of."

However, it slowly dawned upon her that this was a case for recognition of the mercies of Providence. These were of two classes; one of which, known to her as Divine Forgiveness towards Sinners, on condition that they went to church, was an entirely different thing from certain good-natured impulses on the part of the Creator towards persons in difficulties, prompting special intervention on their behalf to save them from the blunders of Creation now that He had set it fairly going, and left it to shift for itself. He was, it appeared, very catholic in these impulses, as often as not giving non-churchgoers the benefit of His reserved rights of intervention in the caprices of the material universe. Challis believed that his wife used up all the theological liberality of which she was capable in ascribing let-offs of Jews, Turks, Heretics, and Infidels to special interventions which could only postpone for a very short time their Eternal Damnation at the hands of the intervening power.

However, he was in no mood just now for laughing at her; so he let it be supposed that he acquiesced in what amounted to a suggestion that Providence had knocked out that bit of stopping from her front tooth in order to prevent her coming by that train. He kept absolute silence through her acknowledgment of her indebtedness to her Maker, being very careful not to allow his features to assume any expression whatever. For he had found by experience that absolute glumness, total suspension of speech and facial movement, with great caution and reserve in the use of the pocket-handkerchief, if resorted to, was almost a religious force in itself.

When the good lady had sufficiently discharged all her obligations in the proper quarter, another aspect of the case seemed to present itself. "But, my dear Titus, what a terribly anxious time you must have had!"

He would sooner have had this earlier. Providence could have waited. But--sooner now than never! "Why, my dear old girl," said he, "I was simply terrified out of my wits!" A hearty laugh came with this all the easier that it was his order of release from the ten-minutes' penal servitude he had just undergone in the cause of his wife's religious sensibilities. "Come now, old woman," he went on, "say you're sorry for giving me such a fright."

"Why--of course I'm sorry! What makes you suppose I'm not? I don't want to give you frights, I'm sure!" She paused a moment over the subject. Though she was not killed, it might touch her home-circle at some other point. "I wonder who the women were. Our laundress brings the Wash from Streatham. It might have been her coming to-day." She went on with particulars of the Wash; how it itself was centred at Wimbledon, but there was a succursale at Streatham, whence fine linen, got up, might be brought by rail. Challis interrupted:

"These two women I saw were not washerwomen."

"Oh dear!--were they ladies?" A note of alarm. Marianne had assumed that they were people. Challis strove not to seem to broach derision on the well-worn subject. He said seriously, "Ye-es, I think so." But then his inherent vice of mind got the better of him, and he added: "Not Duchesses, certainly! But ladies, yes! Perhaps they were Baronets' wives."

Marianne flushed angrily. "Now, Titus, you know that's nonsense! How is it likely that both of them should be Baronets' wives, when there they were in the same train. And you know perfectly well no one ever said a word about Duchesses! So it's ridiculous!" But still a shot home seemed wanting, so after a pause Marianne ended up: "I suppose it was meant to be witty. Only if it's to be that, I shan't sit with you while you smoke."

"No, Polly Anne dear, it's not to be that. Never mind my chaff! I had the impression they were people in our own sort of position in life--might have been friends of ours, don't you know! But we shall hear fast enough."

This conversation had taken longer than appears by the story; because, at a repast, converse travels slowly. Steptoe, or her equivalent, has to be found fault with at intervals, deservedly. By this time the best end of the neck, and the difficulty of carving it, were things of the past. So also was a slight sub-ruction occasioned by Challis being disgusting about Anne Boleyn's neck, and the bungling executioner who wanted all his patients' necks to be jointed at the butcher's. It was an old joke of his that always enraged Marianne. But he had begged pardon, and the topic had vanished with its cause. This and some minor matters had made it coffee-time, when Marianne threatened to retire and leave Challis to enjoy his pipe alone.

She did not do so, being assuaged by her husband's seeming acceptance of social distinctions. But it rankled, too, as will be seen by the first thing she says to him as he settles down to his pipe. "Duchesses, indeed!"

If it were fine they would be out in the garden at the back. Only the drizzle is there still. But it keeps very close, too, and we must have the window wide open. The lamp won't blow out if we stand it away on the sideboard. This sideboard is the one that was bought--such a bargain!--for Great Coram Street. Those rings on the drawers that swing--handles to pull them open and find the corkscrew--are the rings that Bob in his infancy was permitted to use as knockers in a drama he was the hero of--a postman who delivered letters at very short intervals indeed. Oh, how his surroundings of this evening stung Challis with memories of his past! How they drove home to him the need to keep at bay those outlying fires--or wild beasts, were they?--that had made an inroad on his present.

If he could only have been a Roman Emperor now! Had he not read lately somewhere how Hadrian had married two Persian Princesses--real ones!--two at once!--as cool as a cucumber? Oh dear!...

What is that Marianne is saying? "You're not the one to talk, Titus!"

"Talk about what, Polly Anne?" His first puff, with this, and he is in great comfort and good-humour! The wild beasts are standing over.

"About Duchesses and Baronets' wives! Just look at your Grosvenor Squares!" There is little or no ill-humour here. Rather it might be called concession to good-humour; an admission of her husband's friends to their talk as permanent objects--forgiven objects, certainly--of critical raillery. No harm meant!

And if there were, Challis would ignore it, rather than have his pipe spoilt. "Don't let's talk about them," he says. "Let's talk about our Grosvenor Squares."

"Your Grosvenor Squares!"

"My Grosvenor Squares, then! Polly Anne shall have her own way." And then he had to stifle at birth a most excruciating thought: "If I had only just succeeded in keeping my accursed folly under, I might now have continued, 'You know, Polly Anne dear, they might be your Grosvenor Squares, too, and nothing would please me better. Why not be jolly?'" How could he make such a speech now? His only chance of a real tranquil life was to keep as far away from the source of his disturbance as possible. He succeeded in suffocating the thought, and repeated, "Let's talk about my Grosvenor Squares."

Marianne's reply was a grudging sound. "Well!--and how are they?" The unspoken addendum seemed to be: "I suppose I must say something. What do you make of this, my minimum? Take it!"

But Challis was in for pretending that all was well, and the world unsullied by what Mr. Riderhood called "offences giv' and took." Everybody was very well at Royd, he testified. Only this time the house-party was so over-powering that he had not seen nearly so much of the family as on the previous occasion. In fact, some of the members he had hardly spoken to--a statement so intensely true that it brought his veracity up to a reasonable average.

"Of course," he said, "I was obliged to talk a bit to the old boy. Just as he was obliged to compliment the celebrated author on his last book. But I never got on the subject on which he is really interesting, the inner life of the Feudal System...."

"Which is...?" said Marianne. Who, on being offered "William the Conqueror" as a substitute for his System, added: "Oh, I know! We used to say him, 'William the Conqueror, one thousand and sixty-six.'" Challis continued:

"Last time we had quite a long talk over it, and I'm not at all sure that we don't agree in the long run. He contends that the ideal of Feudalism...."

"What's that?"

"Same as the Feudal System ... that the ideal of Feudalism, properly understood, is quite the noblest...."

"I beg your pardon, dear! Just one moment! Yes--Harmood! ... what? You must come near and speak louder.... Well!--I suppose he must have eightpence. But tell him another time I shall go to Cowdery's, because they did them for sixpence. You haven't twopence in coppers, have you, dear?" Challis had, and the incident, whatever it was, closed. Marianne's economical instincts, needed in old days, had survived their necessity overmuch.

But the ideal of Feudalism didn't get properly understood that time. Challis left it, and began somewhere else: "Her ladyship I scarcely talked to at all, which I was sorry for, as I don't dislike her, and I fancy she knew some people named Nettlefold when I was a boy." He was quite aware of careless construction, fraught with suspicion of imbecility; it really didn't matter. "As for Sibyl...."

"Do you mean Judith?"

"I mean Sibyl. I fancy she'll end by marrying that Lord Felixthorpe. They are always about in his motor together. By-the-bye, I hardly know how to thank that chap. He lent me his motor to the station this morning. I like him. He's too good for Sibyl."

But Marianne's attention has been caught by the honey in a flower on the way. "I don't understand these people and their ways," she says. "But I suppose it's all right if it's a motor. Charlotte says because of the chauffeur."

Challis's sense of the ludicrous gets the upper hand. "I should have thought the chauffeur would be too much preoccupied," says he. "Anyhow, I shouldn't be at all surprised to hear they were engaged, any day. As for the party itself, there were some very interesting people this time, and some most interesting talk on abstruse subjects after dinner."

But the lady felt she would rather hear Mrs. Eldridge on the meaning of the word "abstruse" before she ventured out of her depth about it. A queer word, that! Also, she does not mean to have Judith elided in this way. "What about the other one?" she says bluntly.

There it was!--the gist of the whole situation in a nutshell. What about the other one? As Challis laid down his pipe, half-smoked--a strange thing for him--he was aware that, without being absolutely tremulous, it would not do for him to bring his teeth very near together without touching, or they would chatter. They must be either clutched or parted. It is just possible that people exist who have never had this experience.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXXV

OF MUTUAL MISTRUST. HANDSOME JUDITH! BUT MARIANNE HAD NO WISH TO PRY INTO HER AFFAIRS. HOW MATTERS WERE COMFORTABLER. PLEASE BURN THAT POSTSCRIPT! CHALLIS'S EXPLANATION. HOW IT FAILED, AND HE WENT FOR A WALK

People go on making believe a thing is true which each knows to be false, or vice versa, a very long time. But when each believes the other thinks he knows nothing about the matter--or everything about it, as may suit his case best--reciprocal deception will have a still longer life. And longer still when each believes the other thinks that he believes ... and so on across and across ad infinitum, in shuttlecock flights! Our own belief is that if this topic were discussed by Senior Wranglers, one or more of them would say something intelligible, which we can't, about the term of mutual deception increasing as the square of the distance of the shuttlecock flights, or their number. The first sounds best.

At what stage of the labyrinth of reciprocities were Mr. and Mrs. Challis left when the gentleman laid down his pipe? Perhaps, considering that one has other uses for one's brain, it is safest to leave that question unanswered. But there was this difference between them--that Mrs. Steptoe's Ramsgate tale had made of Marianne's mind a fruitful soil for suspicion; while Titus's, apart from a tendency to detect the influence now and again of Charlotte Eldridge, was disposed to acquit his wife of any ingenuity in cultivating crops of the weed--indeed, of very few mental subtleties of any sort whatever. She was to him the incarnation of stupidity and abstract goodness, a solid substratum of which was an article of faith with him, reconcilable with any amount of little tempers, or big ones. And this faith went the length of supposing that Polly Anne credited him with it, and knew it would prevent him imagining that she could think him capable of believing that she could foster suspicions against him. Simple and intelligible!

But the nervous tremor that seized on Challis when he laid his pipe down just now was too palpable to leave reciprocal deceptions intact, unless accounted for as foreign to the subject. Therefore, when Marianne recognized the abnormal nature of the pipe-movement by saying, with the mien of an answer-seeker, "Are not you going to finish your pipe?" he felt that some intrepidity was called for, for both their sakes.

"Fancy I got a little chill in the damp ... oh no!--I changed everything. Besides...."

"Besides-what?"

"Well--it was such an awful business, you know! Why, when we were driving down to the station, how was I to know I shouldn't find you burned to a cinder? Just fancy!--Polly Anne!"

"You wouldn't have cared," says Marianne, softening. This was an improvement, and none the worse for the serious note in Challis's voice as he referred again to his relief when he knew the alarm had been for nothing. Nevertheless, in a sense, he was glad it was true that he had gone through strain enough to account for fifty nervous ague-fits. But he felt a dreadful hypocrite for all that! Just fancy!--availing himself of the incident to cover his embarrassment in answering a plain question about his young lady friend. But his duplicity was really for Marianne's sake as well as his own. Come now!

"I tell you what, Tite: you must have a regular good strong hot toddy to-night, with plenty of lemon. I'll make it for you." This was good--almost Coram Street again! Why spoil it? "I can't think what could possess you to go catching cold at the station. It didn't do any good." But she improved it: "You must have it after you're in bed, and you must have my duvet." Challis made no immediate protest against this policy, but the prospect of a June night under a duvet can never be tempting, even when one anticipates the sleep of a clear conscience. He was, however, really grateful, kissing a rather improved countenance his wife advanced on application: this phrase is taken from his mind, which had taken it, more suo, from the moneylender's column in the Times.

"It isn't anything; I've no objection to the toddy, though. Now, tell me some more about your mother ... about the dentist ... anything ... oh, by-the-bye! one of my letters was from Bob. It's upstairs.... I'll go and fetch it."

"Never mind it now! Or I can send Harmood. You didn't answer my question."

"Let me see--what was the question? No, don't ring! Harmood won't know where to find it. Besides, I don't want her fishing about among my papers." And the obstinate man went, and came back with the letter. If he hoped that the previous question was going to lapse, he was mistaken.

"The question was about your friend Miss Arkroyd." She took Bob's letter, opened it, and made a pretence of looking at it. But she left her restatement, with all the force it had gathered by delay, for his consideration while she did so.

He stood behind her, looking over her shoulder at Bob's letter. The exact thing that crossed his mind as he did so was that he had now a new box of wax vestas in his pocket. But, then, he had had to quash the thought that suggested it. "That's a portrait of the new second master putting on his trousers," said he. "What about my friend Miss Arkroyd, Polly Anne dear?... No, that's not his real name. Pitt's his real name.... Rev. Iairus Pitt.... Oh, well!--boys will be boys, you know...."

But Marianne was not to be turned from her purpose by the Rev. Iairus Pitt, whose parents had not baptized him considerately. "Is it all settled about her going on the stage?... handsome Judith?"

So strangely had last night's image of Judith--or, rather, her identity--cancelled her previous one of the stage aspirant, that Challis all but exclaimed, "Oh, of course!--she was going on the stage. Actually I had forgotten that!" For he had forgotten it--Estrild and all!--in the outbreak of fever in which he had so completely forgotten himself and his position and his duties. But he kept to himself what would have been unintelligible to Marianne; not without a feeling of relief that her question had reminded him of an aspect in which Judith could be easily discussed by both, without any arrière pensée.

"Handsome Judith," said he seriously and equably as he resumed his seat, "has given up all idea of going on the stage. That's at an end."

"Oh!" A short and thick exclamation, very conclusive.

"I shall have to find someone else to play Estrild if I finish the play...."

Mrs. Challis was considering. "She's going to be married, of course," she said.

"H'm!--I've no reason to suppose she is."

"You said her sister was?"

"I said something about Sibyl and Lord F. Yes!--but they're not twins, you know, she and Judith!"

"I know that. Really, Tite, I'm not the goose you always try to make me out! Besides, twins don't, invariably: sometimes one dies of a broken heart."

"Judith won't die of a broken heart when her sister marries," says Challis dryly.

"I understand. But, Tite dear, do consider! A married sister younger than herself!"

"Miss Arkroyd isn't the sort of party to contract matrimony in order to walk in front of her sister at Court. Besides, there might not be another coronet handy, to walk in front with."

"What sort of party is she, then?" Challis thought to himself that a certain class of stupidity makes as formidable a cross-examiner, sometimes, as cleverness itself. Getting no immediate reply, his wife repeated, "Well!--what sort?"

"She's a problem; that's the expression nowadays. I'm not sure it isn't as good as another."

"Never mind the expression! You know you admire her very much."

"I do. But, you see, Polly Anne?--she won't act Estrild. So where are we?" What a boon Estrild, recollected just in time, had been in this conversation!

"What excuse does she give for backing out?" The speaker's grim attitude towards suggested breach of faith grated on her husband. But that was all in the day's work--the bad day's work!

"I think I'll have another pipe.... Oh yes!--I'm feeling all right again now; it was nervous, after that horrible affair at the station.... I'll fill it up new, and then I'll tell the whole story."

"I have no wish to pry into Miss Arkroyd's affairs. However, tell me if you like."

"Not if you don't like!" Challis is again puffing in comfort at this point, and, to our thinking, matters are going easier. No particular reply comes from Marianne, and he assumes a disclaimer, saying, "All right, Polly Anne! I'll go on. It seems that the Great Idea had something to do with it...."

"Let's see!--that's the Fine Art turn-out...."

"Yes; the new Art and Craft affair--Sibyl's. There was a family row when she proposed to put up her name, with 'Limited' after it, over a shop in Bond Street." He went on, and narrated briefly how Sibyl had met her parents' remonstrances by saying that if Judith went on the stage, she didn't see for her part why she shouldn't conduct a business. Especially as it was distinctly understood that mechanics would not be employed; only craftsmen. Also that the articles sold would not be things, but art-products. Also that they would be curiously wrought. How the Bart. had interrupted her, to ask what on earth she meant by Judith going on the stage! For the most palpable and visible things would go on in the family under the worthy gentleman's nose, and he be never a penny the wiser. "Then," said the narrator, "Judith was summoned, and there was a scene. The upshot was that both the young ladies being of age, and having a right to go their own way, it seemed at first that each would certainly carry out her intention, in spite of their parents' remonstrances. But maturer reflection showed Sibyl, whose sisterly feelings run high...."

"They don't hit it off?"

"Exactly!... showed Sibyl that if she made her own compliance with her parents' wishes contingent on Judith throwing up the play-acting...."

"I see," said Marianne very perceptively; adding, as an under-word, "There was the lord, too."

"It was what John Eldridge would have called a wipe for Judith. And, as you say, Lord Felixthorpe might have flinched at a stage sister-in-law."

"I didn't say so, but it was what I meant." An uncomfortable look comes on Marianne's face, as though something had crossed her mind. She says disconnectedly, "Tite dear!"--with a new intonation out of place at this juncture, but immediately after cancels it. "Never mind!--at least, never mind now! Go on about Judith."

Challis glanced sharply at her, puzzled by her words and their manner. But he let them pass, and continued: "Anyhow, Judith has given up the stage, and there is to be no shop with 'Sibyl Limited' over it."

"What do you suppose you will do about the play?"

"I must leave it alone for a little, and see how matters shape themselves. You see, the play was written for Judith Arkroyd, and you can't think what a job it will be to think another identity--Silvia Berens, for instance--into the part. Or Thyrza Shreckenbaum."

"I really am sorry for you, Titus. After writing things all over again and making alterations! Oh dear!" Marianne thought to herself, should she get up and go across the rug to her husband and kiss him? But then a memory must needs cross her mind--that story of the Ramsgate wedding--never cleared up! Till that was done, her rôle of domestic affection stopped short of gratuitous kissing. Some day she would get at that story, and know all about it.

Meanwhile matters were comfortabler; no doubt of it! That odious play-acting business was at an end--at least, so far as Judith, who was the vicious quitch in it, was concerned. Titus might have as much Silvia Berens as he liked; she knew that would be all safe. Also, Marianne misinterpreted her husband's visible reluctance to talk of Judith, at first, as an excusable disgust with the young lady herself for the trick she had played him. He had got to speak of her freely enough at last. This was because, as a matter of fact, his sense of his surrounding relations was growing on him, and each moment was feeling comfortabler than its predecessor.

Challis finished his pipe, and they chatted of other matters. Then followed a good deal about the railway accident, and Challis talked learnedly about the flashpoints of petroleums. They seemed quite agreed that if it could only be established beyond a doubt that neither of them had ever seen or spoken to any one of the sufferers, or their relations or belongings, the calamity would come within the category of common accidents in newspapers, that happen every day somewhere, and can't be helped. But Marianne was terribly afraid that the guard, who was burned nearly to a cinder, must be the red-nosed guard who looked in at her carriage in the morning and asked if she had dropped a pair of double eyeglasses. That would bring it painfully near home.

Mr. Eldridge's impulsiveness and some of his individualities were reviewed. It was impossible to acquit him of having given his friend a perfectly unnecessary fright; but we would not dwell on it, for look at the excellence of his heart! This quality was always saving John from censure, which would have been dealt out unsparingly to the possessor of a bad one. It is extraordinary what an affliction you can be to your friends, with impunity, when once your intrinsic goodness is an established fact.

Even grandmamma was pacifically talked over--a thing that happened rarely enough. Marianne had not been very long with her, as, while they were at lunch, the tooth-stopping came out, and she knew that if it was not replaced the tooth would come on aching. These interesting particulars came gradually, as Marianne brewed the promised toddy. Challis had declined to have it in bed, as quite uncalled for by his malady, which he maintained, truly enough, no doubt, was purely a nervous affection.

But he never drank that toddy!

For when it was ready, Marianne said: "It's so hot I can't touch it. You'll have to wait."

"All right," he said. "I shall be a few minutes yet. I dare say I'll have another half-pipe to make up three. Don't you stop, old girl!"

Marianne yawned. "Well, perhaps I may as well go. I've had a good deal of running about, and I'm sleepy. Good-night, dear; don't burn your mouth!" She was more her old self than she had been for a long time. For, you see, she had seen--but slowly--that her cloud had cleared away. Challis's own feeling that--for him--Judith must cease, had worked itself into speech that his wife had merely supposed to relate to the chute of the projected drama. It was a good wind that blew Judith away, whatever quarter it blew from.

She went close to her husband, giving him the right piece of her face to kiss. "Which tooth was it?" said he. She showed him, tapping it. "It's a very little hole," he said, "and a good tooth!" She replied: "That's why Mr. Leaver says it should be stopped with gold. Now, good-night, dear! Drink the toddy, and don't be very late!"

Now, if only this woman had just gone straight away to bed and slept! And if that man, who had fully sworn to himself--mind you!--that the thing he had to do was to thrust his past delirium behind him, had but smoked his pipe, drunk his toddy, slept and waked next day a wiser man, might not the whole of the silly story have passed into oblivion, and left this prosy tale of ours without a raison-d'être? Quite possible! But, then, no such thing happened.

For Marianne seemed to hang fire and hesitate over her departure. She paused as she passed the open window; the sweet air, now that the rain had stopped, was pleasant after so much smoke. "What a beautiful moonlight night it's come out!" she said. But the moonlight grated on her husband. That moon was only a day older and a shade smaller than the full orb shining on the little Tophet garden and that Calypso of last night, robed in a stellar universe of moonsparks. Why need the rain-rack, flying northward after doing the garden so much good, leave conscious guilt exposed to the sight of Artemis--or Hecate--who knew all about it yesterday? Why not have gone on raining a little longer?

Marianne took another view. She said again, "How lovely the moon is, Tite!" in an unusual way for her. For she was not given to romantic sentiments. Her husband read in her manner a recognition of their rapprochement; for such it was, though no official recognition had been bestowed on distance, its condition precedent. He went and stood beside her; and, for her sake as well as his own--so he thought--gazed on the moon with all the effrontery of those experienced reprobates, Mr. Brown and Lord Smith. He forsook the toddy to do so, having just tried it with his fingers, and decided it could be touched with safety.

They stood side by side at the window; a minute or more, maybe. Then she said, almost as though conscious of some unscheduled ratification: "That'll do, dear! Now suppose I go to bed. The toddy will be cold." He followed her to the foot of the stairs, to endorse the cordiality of his send-off. There she kissed him again, but said, rather puzzling him: "I know you've forgiven me, Tite dear!"

He was moved as well as puzzled. "But, my dearest girl," said he, "what have I to forgive?"

"What I said in my letter." Whatever this woman's faults were, she was always downright.

"But, dear old goose, what did it all come to? You couldn't get away from home just now, or something. What did it matter? That was all right!" Oh, how he wished he could have added, "Come next time"! But, alas!--that was all over now; reasons why jostled each other in his brain. No more Royd!

"I didn't mean that," says the downright one, pushing facts home. "I meant what I wrote at the end, on the back of the last sheet. It was all nonsense, you know; I never meant it."

"I didn't see the back of the last sheet. I read it in a great hurry just going in to dinner last night."

"Well!--it was there. Don't read it; burn it! Can't you get it now, and burn it for me to see? I would so much rather."

Challis should have replied that he had got the letter safe somewhere, he knew, and he would look it up after he had finished his half-pipe. The reprobates the story has referred to would have done so; would probably have gone the length of turning out their pockets, slapping themselves on those outworks; would even have said, being men of spirit, Dammy, madam, the Devil was in it if they could tell what had become of the letter! Come what might, they would have cut a figure! Challis cut none, or if he did it was a poor one. The fact is that, considered as a liar, he was good for nothing--had a very low standard of mendacity; and, indeed, had suffered so much over this affair of Judith that it was a luxury to him to say something, at last, without any reserves.

"It's burned already, Polly Anne. So you may be easy. Ta-ta!" He had said it before he remembered how unready he must perforce be with details.

"Oh!" rather curtly. "I suppose you lit your pipe with it? Very well!"

He had better have let misapprehension stand. Better that amount of false construction than the actual facts. But he must needs clear his character. "No, Polly Anne; it was really no fault of mine. It was the merest accident...." He stuttered over it; and she, seeing he had some tale to tell or reserve about it--but, to do her justice, without any idea of a lion in ambush--waited with patience. This, as you know, is the deadliest way in which stammered information can be received.

"It really was--you know how imp ... difficult it is to read by moonlight--and my wax vesta I lit to read it with was the last I had. It was when I threw it away--yes, when I threw it away it set fire to the letter. It burned my fingers, and I threw it on the ground." What a lame business! And he dared not mention Judith, and knew it.

Marianne's voice is changing a little as she repeats: "It burned your fingers, and you threw it on the ground?" She does not use the words "Please explain!" aloud. She merely leaves them unspoken.

But her husband has only begun saying "Yes ..." uneasily, when she cuts him short. "Were they dining by moonlight at Royd last night?"

"No--no--of course not! You don't understand...."

"I don't."

"I had read the letter myself just before dinner, and I missed reading the postscript, because it was late, and the dinner-gong sounded. This of the wax match was in the garden, after." It is coming slowly--the inevitable--and he is beginning to know it. Maybe Marianne sees the flush mounting on his face.

"I thought you never saw the back of the last sheet? Why did you want to read the rest again? Had I said anything wrong?"

"No, dear!--you don't understand. Listen...."

"Yes--go on!" Because what has to be listened to seems to hang fire However, it comes in the end.

"It was not I myself that wanted to read the letter again just then...."

"Who had read it before?"

"I didn't mean that, either, dear--do wait!"

"I am waiting ... tell me ... tell me at once!" Surely Marianne's breath came a little short on the last words, and she is leaning on the banister-rail perceptibly. His answer comes in the quick undertone of one who wishes to get something said that he would have been glad to leave unuttered.

"I was asked if I thought you would mind your answer to their invitation being shown, and I could not remember a word in the letter that I thought you could possibly object to my showing...."

"Who do you mean by 'they'?"

"The--the family. Lady Arkroyd...."

"My message was to Judith Arkroyd, who wrote to me. Do you mean her when you say they? Who else was there when she saw the letter?"

"No one."

"You had better tell me exactly what happened."

"I had. They had a party, and dancing going on. I went away to a quiet garden there is, to be out of the noise, and Miss Arkroyd was there. She had seen your letter arrive for me when the post came, and had seen me after reading it just before dinner, and seen me slip it in my pocket. She asked to be allowed to see it--I know with some idea of inducing you to change your mind and come, and I ... I may have been wrong, you know ... only remember I had not read the postscript you speak of ... well! I let her look at it."

"Then about the matches and the fire?"

"Just an accident. I held a match for her to read by, and it caught a gauze veil she had. It was just got clear in time to save her a bad burning. But the letter caught in the blaze, and was burned before I could save it. That is all!"

"Is that quite all?"

"Quite all!"

"It is quite enough. Good-night!"

"Oh, Polly Anne, Polly Anne!--don't think--don't believe?..."

"Go on. What?"

"... anything but what I've told you.... Oh, my dear!..."

But Marianne has left him, and is on her way upstairs. She is quite changed from the Polly Anne who was standing by the window but now. She walks stonily, and looks white. But her fortitude only lasts as far as the return of the staircase. As she turns, and knows that he can see her face from below, lighted as it is by the gas on the landing above, she breaks down altogether, and reaches her bedroom-door in a passion of hysterical tears.

"No--no--no--no!" she cries. "Take away your hands. Go away and leave me." For her husband has followed her, three steps at a time. He knows, and the knowledge is a knife in his heart, how wrong he has been; not in falling in love out of bounds--a thing he had no control over--but in showing that letter, which he could easily have refused to do. Passion and action live on opposite sides of the river. Now, what worlds would he give to find palliation for himself in his inner conscience!--it is the want of that that ties the tongue of his explanation to her. Yet he must qualify his contrition, if only that plenary admission of guilt would be taken to imply still more, and worse, to come.

"Polly Anne dearest, for God's sake don't run away with a false idea! A great deal too much is being made of a trifle. If you would only be patient with me!..."

"I am patient. Now tell--what is the false idea? Why is it too much? Why is it a trifle?--showing my letter to--to that woman before you had read it yourself!" She is killing her sobs as she speaks, and has a hard struggle. They are heads of a Lernæan Hydra.

"Don't be unfair to me, dear! I had read it, all except that one bit on the back. It was so easy to miss it!"

"I never do--things on the back of letters."

"It was stupid of me. But what you don't understand, dear, is that I wanted Miss Arkroyd to read your message herself. There was certainly nothing you could have minded her seeing in the letter itself."

"Indeed! How do you know?"

"Well!--I don't know; I think."

"And when you had put Miss Arkroyd out, what happened?"

"How do you mean 'what happened'?"

"Oh, don't tell me if you don't like! I am out of it!"

Now, Challis would have liked to be able to say, "It is by your own choice that you are out of it; and the whole of this misunderstanding has grown, through a good intention of this lady you hate, to bring you into it." But he had tied his own tongue. "It"--whatever it was--had ceased to exist for him now at Royd. And probably his future intercourse with Grosvenor Square would be limited to just such an allowance of formal calls as would draw a veil over strained relations, and silence suggestion of ostracism. His behaviour of the previous evening had created a no-thoroughfare; but the conversation had hardly arrived at the notice-board.

"Nothing happened; the burns were not bad." His words were almost true--the prevarication, in this form, of the slightest, but the notice-board was clearly legible by now. "We left the garden, and no more was said about the letter, because some men from the house joined us, talking politics."

But Marianne has gone stony. Her manner rejects the men from the house, who talked politics. "I s-see," she says, fully expressing the closure of her mind against all extenuations, palliations, evasions, or excuses. "The letter was burned, and there was an end of it."

"Exactly! An end of it!" He extended the phrase in his mind to his relations with Royd, and all belonging to them.

Marianne waited so incisively for anything further to be said by her husband, and he felt so certain that if the no-thoroughfare notice were disregarded, the trespassers would suffer penalties--his own being enforced disclosure of what would be injurious to both, and quite useless--that he was almost glad when his wife said stonily: "Your whisky is getting cold. Perhaps you had better take it." He answered drearily, "Perhaps I had," and went away, but not to the dining-room. He went to his own study, and sat there aimlessly, thinking, in the half-dark. Presently, making as little noise as possible, he went downstairs, put out the lights that had been left burning, and, going stealthily out at the front-door, went for a walk in the moonlight.

But that carefully mixed nightcap remained untouched, and was placed by Harmood on the sideboard, as an embarrassment difficult to dispose of where no man-servant was kept. And there it reproached its maker and its non-consumer in the morning.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXXVI

HOW CHALLIS AND HIS WIFE PARTED. A DINNER AT THE CLUB, AND HIS RETURN FROM IT. WHAT HAS BECOME OF YOUR MISTRESS? A LETTER FROM MARIANNE CRAIK. DAMN CHARLOTTE ELDRIDGE!

There are no hours more miserable than the first ones of a day after a quarrel, or high tension akin to a quarrel. Next morning at the Hermitage found it full of silences and reserves. Mr. and Mrs. Challis were speaking with studied forbearance--even civility--towards one another. The children had been told to make less noise, and had made it, but had then been told to make still less, and so on, to the point of virtual extinction. Their mother had risen at her usual time, but looking ill, and had scarcely found fault with her usual spirit. And yet Harmood, whose intuitions the story is now following, observed that the butter had a flavour--namely, the one it so often has; and the eggs were the sort that won't boil. There is another sort, which has a passion for disintegration; but this time it was the former, which is worse; and yet they were accepted in silence. Harmood saw clearly that there had been words, and forthwith resolved to select this moment to give warning suddenly--a step she had been contemplating for some weeks. An up-to-date English servant respects herself more, or less, in proportion to the degree of confusion into which she can plunge her employers when she throws up her situation.

Mr. Challis had only waited--Harmood noticed--to see the children as they went out for an early walk, not to be in the hot sun too much. He kissed both affectionately, but his customary jokes with them were rather under his breath. He then went to his room, and presumably wrote something Harmood's inner consciousness was able to form a low opinion of, without perusal; for whenever she did out the study she mentally classed MS. literature as a lot of stuff.

Mrs. Challis transacted necessary household business, and went straight to her room, saying she was going out, and was not sure when she should be back. At the street-door she was stopped by Harmood, respectfully but firmly. Was she likely to be back before twelve? She couldn't say; why? Of course, because Miss Harmood wished to give warning, and if she did not do so before midday, she would have to pass twenty-four hours more under the roof that had sheltered her for three years at least. As Mrs. Challis might be out, she would prefer to give a month's warning forthwith.

Mrs. Challis did not show the panic Harmood had promised herself the sight of. On the contrary, she barely raised her eyebrows as she answered: "Certainly, Harmood! To-day is the twentieth," and was actually going out. But she paused an instant at a prefatory cough from the handmaiden. Had the latter any complaint to make? The answer renounced complaint, but with implication of generosity. "Very well!" said Mrs. Challis thereon. "I can't wait. The twentieth." And went away, leaving Harmood mortified.

She came back between twelve and one. She was heated with walking, but might have been crying, too. So Harmood thought when she let her in. She went upstairs, speaking to her husband outside his door. She had just come back from Charlotte's, she said. Was he there? Yes--he was, and came out at once to speak with her. He was amiable, but subdued. Had waited for her, in case there was anything--a vague expression, but conciliatory under the circumstances. There was certainly nothing--no doubt about it. Was he going out?--his coat suggested it. Yes; he would not be in to lunch. A letter had come by the second post, asking him to meet a man on business in the City at two. He would lunch at Scallopini's, and stay at his club, where he had promised to dine with his publisher and some authors at 7.30. But he would not come in late.

Then Marianne said coldly: "Don't hurry on my account."

He answered, as cheerfully as he dared--that is, not to seem to ignore the conditions: "You'll go to bed just the same, of course?"

Her reply was: "I shall go to bed." Nothing more. She went on to her own bedroom.

Challis could almost have sworn he heard a sob as the door closed. Was it so or not? He could not bear the doubt. He would risk it--go to her, throw himself at her feet, cry out in his misery for pardon for the past, and oblivion; for a pact of hope for the days and hours to come. If he could only have made his decision a few seconds sooner! But he just missed the chance, as Marianne opened her door and came back, stony.

"I forgot to tell you. Harmood has given warning."

"Harmood! Why--what on earth has the woman to complain of?"

"I can't say. I have given her no cause of complaint. She makes no complaint, as I understand."

"Well!--that is extraordinary! However, she's not indispensable. We can do without her. Only you'll have such a bother to find someone else."

Marianne said: "I don't think I shall." And Challis imagined that she referred to some possible servant or useful agency that she knew of. But the thought in her mind was different, as we shall see. Challis recalled her words afterwards. All that this talk of Harmood meant for him then was that a good impulse had been spoiled by it.

He looked at his watch, and found he would only just have time to get to town, get some lunch, and be ready for his appointment, which was an imperative one. He changed slippers for boots, and was ready. With his hand on the open street-door, he called out to his wife: "Good-bye, then! I'm off." Contrary to his expectation, she came downstairs.

"You are off," she said, repeating his words. "Good-bye, then!" And rather to his surprise she kissed him, saying: "Yes--then, good-bye!" All the manner of it was a little odd. But his instincts--may be mistaken ones--told him to let well alone. He replied with a warmer kiss than hers had been, and a moment after was on his way to East Putney Station. He was very uncomfortable about losing sight of her for so long. But, after all, it might give their relations a better chance of readjustment. Nothing like a pause!

A business colloquy of some warmth, with a reference to possible legal proceedings, was followed first by a pleasant afternoon at the Club, and next by a very informal dinner of six--of whom at least three were amusing dogs--and lastly by a saunter homewards with one of the amusing dogs, who wished him good-night at Gloucester Road Station. All these experiences were of the sort that brushes cobwebs from the mind, and Challis was feeling much freer at heart when, after midnight, his latchkey clicked in the front-door at the Hermitage, and admitted him to a silent house.

Well!--of course, a house is silent when everyone has gone to bed. What would you have?

Challis lighted his candle and gathered up his letters to read in his study. He went furtively up the two short stairflights, secretly hoping that Marianne would speak from her room to him; for, however quiet he was, she almost always heard him, the exceptions being when he was unusually late, and she very sound asleep. He paused a moment to favour the chance. Not a sound!

He glanced at her door with an uncomfortable feeling he could not at first account for, a sense that it disclaimed an inmate. In a moment, however, he mastered the reason of that. Nothing so very unusual! Only that she had forgotten to put her boots out. Well!--this wasn't a hotel. How absurdly nervous he was, and fanciful!

He turned into his study and lighted his reading-candle, with the reflector. He would be there some time; there were so many letters. First he would open the window, though, to let the sweet night-air in. It was so overpoweringly hot.

Then he sat down to his desk and began upon his letters. One advertisement of no value. Two advertisements of no value. A thick letter from Nebraska to the author of his own first work, etc., etc., care of his publisher; that might be amusing. An enclosure of slip-cuttings; so might that.... Hullo!--what was the meaning of this? One to Mrs. Alfred Challis among his letters! Marianne had overlooked it. Odd, that!

But--but--but, that was not all! Another, and another to Mrs. Alfred Challis. Overlooked?--impossible! Utterly impossible! She must be still out. Where could she have gone? Did not she say she had been at Charlotte's in the morning? Where else could she go? Where else was there to go? Tulse Hill? Why--she was there yesterday!

He sat there a full two minutes, without dropping the letter he held when the thing amiss first caught him, or changing his posture of face or hand. He sat pursuing possibilities in thought, and overtaking none. Then, with sudden resolution in a face white as the envelope he dropped, he rose and went straight to his wife's room, lamp in hand. On the way a thought came--it was just a bare chance!--had she gone to bed early with a headache, saying she was not to be disturbed?--and had all these letters come by the last post? Not probable, certainly, but not impossible! At least, he would knock at her door before going in and waking her suddenly. She would be less surprised.

He tapped and heard nothing. He listened longer than need was, clinging artificially to hope. Then he opened the door and went in. There was no one in the room.

Was there nothing that would give him a clue at once? He could not think coolly yet; utterly useless with this nervous ague-fit on him! He knew it would subside in time, and he would be able to think. But for now, was there nothing?

For instance, in the appearance of the bed? Yes--something! Surely his recollection did not deceive him. Should not the bed, by rights, be "turned down," and be yawning, as it were, for its occupant? Would there not be, normally, some appearance of night-clothes; if not laid out on the coverlid as though courting their contents, at least beneath the pillow? He threw it aside; there was nothing.

On the dressing-table, then? Yes!--the brushes and combs were not there. They might be in the drawer, though. But how about those stoppered bottles? One was clear in his memory--square, with horizontal corrugations and a flat disc with a statement, hazarded by a writer in gold, that it contained eau-de-Cologne. Where was it? Not on that table, nor the chimney-piece. A great fear was on him that she had gone! Then it flashed upon him that if she had, she would have taken her jewels with her. Where did she keep them? In the top wardrobe-drawer. It would be locked, but he and she had a secret knowledge that one key opened all the drawers alike. He felt like an over-sensitive detective; but he got the key and opened it. The jewel-case was there, sure enough, but--not locked! He opened it, and saw at a glance that none of her favourites were there. Oh yes--she had gone! Marianne was gone--there was no doubt of it now!

He dropped back, feeling sick, on a chair, face to face with reality. Event agrees ill with men of Challis's temperament, the sort that can become unhealthily excited by the puppets of their own imagination. That railway accident yesterday was bad enough! But this--think of it!--at home, with the children to tell in the morning!

He tried to think--what next? Rouse the servants? Of course; but which servant? Nurse by preference, certainly. Procul absit Steptoe, and even Miss Harmood! He rose, feeling weak; and without his lamp, for all the house was navigable in the glorious moonlight, found his way to the nursery. Nurse slept in the little room just off it on the landing. But the rooms had a door between, in case of anything in the night. That is nurse's phrase, not ours.

Just as Challis was framing in his mind the question he should ask--and all forms that suggested themselves seemed to intensify the position--the thought crossed his mind that it would be a relief to see those youngsters asleep in the moonlight. Surely it would!--or, would it? He would risk it. He opened the nursery-door furtively, and stole in. But darkness reigned--curtain-darkness; shutter-darkness. Challis knew that little girls that sleep exposed to moonbeams suffer in some mysterious way--go blind, or go silly, or are witched away by bogles. He wasn't sure which. He tiptoed to the window, and could let in the light without noise, for, as it turned out, there was no shutter. What of the bed? He knew how nice they were in bed. All children are.

But the bed was empty.

* * * * *

Mrs. Steptoe, roused from her first sleep, which was about two hours old, and a promising sample, thought at first that she was back in Tallack Street, and that the noise was her lamented husband, the worse for liquor. Further revived, her decision that it might be thieves, and that her choice of action would lie between affecting sleep and calling "Police!" from the window, was short-lived; and she followed it up by referring her master's cries to fire. Harmood's consciousness passed through analogous phases, but with this difference: that the second one did not suggest immediate action. A servant who had just given warning might surely go on pretending to be asleep, unblamed. Was she there at all, technically?

However, the thought of the great terror "Fire!" brings the laziest from his bed. Neither waited to be sure that she was being called by name, but ran out on the landing above, belonging to the attics, to be encountered by Challis's voice from below, shouting madly, "What has become of your mistress? Where are the children? Where on earth are you all? Come down at once!" and so on.

Mrs. Steptoe's tremulous accents stopped him, but he could not catch what she said. "Come down here at once," he cried again, "and speak up plain. Where is your mistress, and the children?" He just got his voice under control for the question.

Mrs. Steptoe came down half-way. Her costume forbade a complete descent. "The mistress and the young ladies and nurse, sir?"

"Yes!--the mistress and the young ladies and nurse. Where are they? Speak quick!"

Mrs. Steptoe found voice enough to say: "Ain't they at Tulse Hill, sir?"

"That's what I want to know. Do you know?"

Mrs. Steptoe found some more voice. "Didn't the mistress say Tulse Hill, Harmood?" She asked the question of the unseen, above, not without recognition of her own necessity as a go-between. Direct communications from a house-and-parlour-maid, single, in a nightgown, could hardly be in order under the circumstances.

"Mrs. Challis said Tulse Hill, Mrs. Steptoe." The delicacy of the position is recognized, and the intercessor and mediator installed. Who repeats the words officially, and adds, as a mere human creature: "My word a mercy, what a turn it giv'!"

"What did your mistress say? When did she go? Did she leave no message?"

"Not with me, sir!" Then officially: "Did Mrs. Challis leave no message, Harmood?" Which, substituting as it does a name for an offensive designation, confirms and ratifies the claim to mediumship made by the speaker, who accordingly repeats the substance of Miss Harmood's communication from above, replacing the offensive designation in the text where it had been ignored in the original.

"The mistress didn't leave no message, sir, only a note. She was taking the young ladies to their grandmamma's, and we was not to expect her back."

"Where's the note?... Did she name any time?" To this Miss Harmood, overstepping delicacy, and speaking, as it were, with the direct voice, replies:

"Mrs. Challis said no time, sir, but you would know. She took her things to stay, and the young ladies, and went about three."

"About three." Mrs. Steptoe confirms, adding: "The note is left on the 'all-table." This anticipates the question on Challis's lips, and also reinstates delicacy, making further direct communication unnecessary.

Challis says abruptly, "You had better get back to bed, both of you!" and goes to bring the lamp from the bedroom. He sees at once that he had overlooked the letter, which must have been at the bottom of the handful he brought up. Of course, it would be, if it was written before three. All those later letters would have hidden it.

Yes--there it was, directed to "Mr. Challis" and nothing else. He brought to the surface a memory of having noticed it at first, and thought it a tradesman's account or a begging application. Now he could see the handwriting. He could not have said whether he was more anxious or afraid to open it. Perhaps the former, so great was his wish to know how it would begin. But it had no definite beginning, such as letters usually have.

"You do not really care for me, so I have made up my mind to leave you--it is all at an end between us, for you do not really care for me--now you can go away to Miss Arkroyd if she will have you--it will not be bigamy, and you know why--I am Kate's sister, and we cannot be legally Man and Wife--mamma has said so all along.

"Oh, Titus, how could you show that letter--could I have acted by you like that?--to show it to that woman to read before you--think if it had been me--my letter showed to some gentleman you half knew, and me not seen it first--oh, Titus--but it is good-bye.

"Besides, I know, because of the garden all by yourselves--Charlotte says so."

Challis started to his feet as he read these words. "I knew it--I knew it!" he cried to the empty air. "Oh, damn that woman!--with all my heart and soul, damn that woman!" He added, without circumlocution, words to the effect that if ever a woman of infamous character existed, she was one. It seemed to soothe him; and after pacing the room once or twice with the letter in his hand, he came back to the lamp, and went on reading:

"Charlotte says so--only it is only the sort of thing I mean--I have no accusation to make--you must believe what I say--it is what I know you feel I go by--and I think most women would, too. If you had cared for me you COULD not have done it, but though you have behaved so to me I shall try to forgive you, though I have quite made up my mind that we must part.

"Dear Titus, I know I have often been short-tempered, but that is another thing--now good-bye.

"Affectly. yours, "MARIANNE CRAIK."

The name was on the fourth line of the last page, though a postscript followed. Challis broke out impatiently into a sort of painful half-laugh, as his eye caught his wife's maiden name. "What folly!" cried he. "What sheer, unqualified folly! Polly Anne!--just fancy! Why--she is my wife: nothing can make her anything else." And then he went on to the postscript.

"POSTSCRIPT.--I have taken away the children, because they are my own. You can ask Mr. Tillingfleet--because he told me--I suppose a lawyer knows----" Here the writing turned sideways, running up the paper-edge: "It is no use your coming to see me--my mind is made up." Then a further continuation, rather illegible on the paper-edge, Challis made out to be: "I will not say, God forgive you, because you do not believe in God."

Challis sat still after reading this, becoming calmer, and thinking. At last he said: "It's all nonsense! Polly Anne will come back fast enough when I've got the kids back. She can't keep them." He seemed quite satisfied of it.

He thought he should not sleep if he went to bed. But he did both, and was a sad man in an empty house when he awoke late from a happy oblivion, and slow remembrance came.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXXVII

HOW CHALLIS COULDN'T BELIEVE MARIANNE WAS IN EARNEST. HOW HE SOUGHT HER AND FAILED. THE EYES OF HOLY WRIT. THE DISGRACEFUL TRUTH. DEAR MISS ARKROYD! WHY FIGHT AGAINST INFLICTED LIBERTY? GLENVAIRLOCH TO LET

"Will Mrs. Challis be back to lunch, sir?" Thus Harmood the respectful, after giving a certain amount of attention to a series of concessions, collectively called breakfast. Her mistress being absent, she was taking advantage of Challis's readiness to submit to anything rather than attend to the domesticities. Just like his fellow-males elsewhere! She was fortified in the adoption of this course by the reflection that she had given warning. And a servant who has given warning is a problem not to be solved under the most subtle definition of Existence yet formulated, even by Graubosch. She is not an Abstract Idea; would not the butcher's bill diminish in that case? On the other hand, could any concrete thing, worthy of the name, do so much in the way of leaving coal-scuttles at stair-feet, or its black-leadin' brush in the empty grate; or its dust-pan full of tea-leaves for when it should be ready to begin sweeping; or the windows flaring wide open, and the door, and all master's papers blowing about?

The story can't settle that point now, nor could Challis. It was metaphysics, and Mr. Brownrigg's business. All the victim of Harmood's qualified entity could distinguish was, for instance, that the table-cloth was grudgingly disposed so as to cover one-third of the table only. Being a tablecloth of huge bulk, with a court-train at each corner, it refused, when quadrupled, to have anything stood on without tumbling over; notably a needlessly small milk-jug, evolved from some obscure corner to stint master in milk with. It wouldn't stand only you held it; so, of course, it just slopped over. But, of course, there was plenty of milk in the house, and the incident closed with Harmood actually bringing The Milk itself, in the most matronly white jug that ever was seen, that seemed to have thrown its whole soul into stability, like Noah's wife in his Ark, who can be stood up on a rough carpet cattle fall sideways on, knocking down their neighbours.

Need it be said that Challis's observation is followed in all this? It shows a state of mind not fully alive to the reality of his position. He was, in fact, pooh-poohing the idea that Marianne's action was more than an outburst of ill-temper, the result--he admitted this--of a perfectly natural resentment under the circumstances. Of an unjust one--yes! He said this to himself again and again, but never exactly located the injustice. He could perceive that this resentment was due to gross misapprehension of the facts of the case, but he cautiously avoided details of the misapprehension. He may have felt misgivings that Marianne was not so very wrong, after all. Women can decide this; no man's verdict has any weight in such a matter.

He attached a certain value to Harmood's concessions of warmed-up coffee, and eggs which were a caution to poachers. He took no advantage of them, or very little, as breakfast; but till they were finally left to perish of cold neglect, he could postpone his answer to the question, "What's to be done next?" However, it would have to be answered some time. A cigar in the garden would help. There is nothing like a cigar after breakfast to clear one's head. But first he must answer that question of Harmood's. Would Mrs. Challis and the young ladies be back to lunch?

"Just ask Mrs. Steptoe again exactly what your mistress said," Challis takes a pleasure in rubbing in the obnoxious expression. Harmood's conduct has been detestable. But she is conscious, from Mr. Challis's manner, of her success. From Mrs. Challis's she had been able to form no opinion.

Mrs. Steptoe testified from the basement, and Harmood returned. No--Mrs. Challis had said nothing but what had been reported last night. She was taking the young ladies to their grandma's, and we was not to expect her back.

"Back to lunch, or what?" Challis raises his voice over the question, and Harmood refers to her authority, with an air of indifference to trifles of this sort. Bald confirmation comes of the wording of the message; no interpretation.

"Very well, then! Your mistress didn't say she wasn't coming to lunch. Of course she is coming to lunch." Challis repulsed an attempt of Mrs. Steptoe to entangle him in the problem of how some abhorrent remainders from the larder--which she offered to show--might be best utilized, and got away to that cigar in the garden, to think....

Damn interruptions!--no, he couldn't see anybody.... Stop! who was it? Miss Harmood, who had not been explicit enough, now testified to Mr. Eldridge; whereupon Challis asked her why she couldn't say so at first? This was unjust and irrational; but Miss Harmood had given warning, and felt partly disembodied. What did it matter to her?

It was John Eldridge, not very intelligible, but in much perturbation at something. "Well--you see!--it was Lotty's idea he should come round. Never would have entered his head himself! No sayin', though!" This was a favourite expression of his, presenting him as a sage prone to suspension of opinion, and open-minded.

After using it once or twice, he used his pocket-handkerchief, causing Harmood to inquire whether Mr. Challis had called. He then stood over the object of his visit, whatever it was, to ask, as an entirely new idea, "How are you yourself, Master Titus?"

"I'm all right, John. Won't you smoke?--that one at the end's very mild." But Mr. Eldridge wouldn't smoke; it was too early in the morning. Besides, he was late at the office. Challis avoided analysis and comparison, and made essays towards explanation of the visit. "Any more railway accidents?" said he.

"Wasn't that the day before yesterday?" Mr. Eldridge stopped polishing his nose to ask this. Challis explained that it was quite recent enough--he was in no hurry for more. He chose to suggest that the question, which had absolutely no meaning whatever, was intended to impute to him an unnatural lust for railway accidents. Mr. Eldridge seemed at a loss, saying: "Now you're poking fun, Master Titus! None of your larks!" Then he muttered to himself. "Thought so--thought so--day before yesterday!"

It was evidently going to be a matter of patience. Challis knew why his visitor had come, of course, but he was not going to supply him with guidance. Perhaps it would be quickest and simplest to leave him entirely alone. Then he would have to burst, or go. He chose the former, after some vague soliloquy about not having inquests on Sundays.

"You don't object to my lookin' round to speak about it, Master Titus?"

"Not a bit, John! Please speak. What is it?"

A gentle reproachfulness was on Mr. Eldridge as he answered: "No--come, I say, now--no gammon, suppose!" And Challis really commiserated him. What a position to be in! To be sent round by your wife, in the legitimate exercise of her omnipotence, to lecture a neighbour believed to be involved in a quarrel with his! And that, too, when you happen to have, from no fault of your own, but from predestination, a short supply of words, and defective powers of construction. Challis appreciated the position quite clearly, and decided to be good-natured. After all, it was that detestable meddlesome Charlotte, not her booby husband himself--most probably--that had organized this expedition into his territory.

"All right, John!" said he. "No gammon, suppose! I know what you want to speak about. Marianne."

"Well, you know!" says John ruefully, "my idear was Charlotte should come herself. Much better idear!"

"What for? Very happy to see her, of course!"

"Well, you know, Master Titus, that's just what I keep on sayin' to Charlotte, that it's no concern of either of ours."

"Sharp chap!" This is interjected privately. So far as it reaches the audience, it seems to be accepted as laurels. "Now, suppose you and Charlotte were to take a holiday, and just leave me and Marianne to fight it out our own way. We shan't quarrel."

Mr. Eldridge became snugly confidential. "There, now, Master Titus, isn't that exactly what I said to Lotty? The very words! 'You leave them to fry their own fish,' I said." Challis thought of his philosophical friends at Royd; here was a new definition of identity wanted! "'You leave them to fry their own fish.' It's what I've been sayin' all along. But when females get an idea, you may just talk to 'em. Nothin' comes of it...."

"What was her idea?"

"Me to come and talk it over in a friendly sort of way. Try to pave the way to a good understanding.... Lots of expressions she used!..." He paused to recall some. "... Oh ah!--I remember ... 'painful misunderstanding'--that was one. And 'tact and delicacy.' She's a clever woman, Lotty, that's a fact, Master Titus."

"Devilish clever, John! Everyone knows that. 'Tact and delicacy' is a capital expression. It reminds me of Mrs. Chapone, but I don't know why." John seemed flattered, and Challis continued, with some disposition to laugh outright: "Look here, old chap! You and that clever lady of yours may just as well be easy. You think Polly Anne and I have quarrelled. But we haven't. And we shan't. I tell you, the thing's out of the question. Sheer nonsense!"

Mr. Eldridge's idea of identity comes to the fore again. "Just what I said--'reg'lar tommy rot.' Mrs. J. E., she agreed with me, down to the ground. There was another expression she used, now! ... what the dickens was it?... Oh, I know!--no, I don't.... Oh yes!--'parties God had joined together let no man put asunder.' Nice feelin' about that!"

"Well!--no man's going to put anyone asunder this time, whether God united them or the Devil. Don't you go and repeat that remark to Mrs. J. E., John."

"No--no, Master Titus! Never say anything--never say a word!--that's the rule. Never say the Devil--never say God; not before females. Keep 'em snug! Good behaviour's paramount--can't be too particular! Expression of my wife's.... I say, I must be runnin'."

"They'll be sending for you from the Office if you don't." Then, as his visitor was departing by the front gate, he called to him from the house-steps: "Sorry the missis and the kids aren't back. They went to Tulse Hill yesterday. I'm going down there presently, only I've some work to finish first." And Harmood overheard, and condemned her employer for his contradictory testimony. "'Ark at him lying!" was the candid form her censure took. Mrs. Steptoe, saying a word in arrest of judgment, for the pleasure of gainsaying Harmood, was met by "Now, didn't he say, only this minute, Mrs. Challis would be back to lunch?"

The question whether, when Mr. Challis remained to lunch at home, as though he expected his wife's return, and immediately after took his departure for Tulse Hill, he had not reconciled his apparently conflicting statements, formed the subject of intemperate controversy between Harmood and Mrs. Steptoe during the remainder of the afternoon.

* * * * *

No doubt Challis had treasured a hope in his heart that his wife and the children would reappear. He succeeded, to his own satisfaction, in pretending he had known they wouldn't, all along; and by the time he had reached Tulse Hill Station, believed he had only remained to lunch at Wimbledon to write important letters.

He rang more than once--two or three times more--at his mother-in-law's, without any response. The first time someone, he thought, looked from behind the blind of an upper window; and then two voices, one dictatorial, the other compliant, conversed up and down the staircase of Glenvairloch, for that was the name of Marianne's mother's villa at Tulse Hill. The next-door neighbour lived at Bannochar.

At his second ring he suspected, at his third was convinced, that non-admission was a parti-pris, in his case, at Glenvairloch. The dictatorial voice had been, not Marianne's, but her parent's, who, probably, had also been the scout at the window. If the household had made up its mind not to admit him, what could he do? A scheme for burglarious entry, suggested by a boy at large, in the hope of reward, did not recommend itself. Even this boy asking the cook next door to let him through, and him to climb through a back-winder, seemed a lawless course to Challis's mind. He found, too, that this boy caused the sudden appearance from space of other boys, and that as they agglutinated round him, passers-by, apparently crétins, wanted to know whether it was a fire. He saw no alternative but to give it up. He did so, resolving to return next day. As it chanced, some pressing appointments made the day after more convenient.

This time he went early in the morning, hoping to effect a surprise. But he knew quite well that if no one else came to the door whose admission was de rigueur, he was practically at the mercy of the garrison. No portcullis need be lifted unless it chose.

A lucky chance befell, in the shape of a butcher-boy, who could not well leave a pound of steak impaled on the gate rails, nor slip three ounces of dripping into the letter-box. Taken into confidence by Challis, he said: "They'll come along for me, you bet." He knew his power, this butcher-boy; but he yelled as well as rang, from sweetness of disposition, although not bound to yell by contract. Indeed, he also shouted an exhortation: "Git them stockin's on, Hemmer, and come along! Can't wait here till Sunday!"

But Emma was really up and dressed, for it was past three o'clock. She took in the meat, and said she would ask, please, if Mrs. Challis was in. Challis raised no objection, but walked into the house beside her, for all that. You see, he was one of the family, however seldom he visited his mother-in-law. And it does not come into practice for a young servant to repulse an applicant for admission; under such circumstances, Emma had admitted Mr. Challis more than once. How could she turn on him and say, "You're not to come in this time"?

He had never been a frequent visitor at the house, though always nominally--or we might say technically--welcome. There had been little open warfare between him and its occupant since his first widowerhood, when his scanty attendances at Divine Service, conceded during his short period of married life, to keep the peace, were discontinued altogether. His perdition had then become an article of the old lady's faith; but she seemed to have decided that the Fires of Hell during the remainder of Eternity would be a sufficient penalty for her son-in-law's delinquencies, without the added sting of incivility from herself when he occasionally found himself under her roof. Moreover, Challis had made a great concession in surrendering Bob to Marianne. His way of describing this surrender of his son was shockingly blasphemous; in fact, he used to indulge in parallels founded on recollections of his own short church-going experience in a way that would have estranged his second wife and her mother for ever from him had their information on the details of their own faith been equal to their conviction that they held it. As it was, the impression sometimes produced on their minds by Challis's irreverent whimsicalities was that there must be the raw material of Salvation somewhere in a person capable of repeating so many correct religious phrases. The story only dwells on these things now because Challis did so as he sat waiting for the appearance of his mother-in-law, and wondering what form her indignation would take.

He had just recollected an occasion when, after a visit to the old lady, he had said to his wife: "Really, Polly Anne, I think I produced quite a devout impression on grandmamma to-day," and her unsuspicious reply, "I thought you spoke very nicely, dear!" when the old lady herself became audible in the lobby without, mixing an asthmatic cough with reprimands to the servant.

"You gurls!" The speaker seemed for a moment almost paralyzed by the force of her indignation against the class she denounced. Then it burst forth in almost a shout--"WHY couldn't-you-do-as-I-told-you-and-say-your-orders-were...?" and so on. But the very vehemence of the fusillade that followed the artillery was suicidal, for the cough cut short what might almost have been printed as a continuous word. Then speech got a turn again, on a revised line, "Why-can't-you-do-as-you're-TOLD?" the gunshot coming this time as a wind-up. Variations followed, to the same effect.

Emma the gurl seemed of a timid and sensitive nature, prone to dissolve in sobs and sniffs. Her defence, Challis gathered, was that he had walked in through the kitchen-door, and that her troops were outflanked by such an unusual move. He felt the defence was good, and that he ought to help. He showed himself at the room-door.

"Don't scold Emma, grandmamma," said he. "It was no fault of hers. If she had given me your message fifty times over, I should have come in just the same. Where's Marianne?"

"Be good enough not to interfere between me and my servants." She had a proper spirit, this old lady, and it was shown at intervals--short ones. As she mellowed with age, these intervals grew shorter.

"Well!--blow Emma up if you like, but it was no fault of hers. Where's Marianne?"

"Will you have the goodness to wait till I have done with this gurl?"

Challis returned into the drawing-room, and waited. Emma--he said to himself--was catching it hot. He felt in his pocket to make sure of half-a-crown, as a solatium, in case Emma showed him out.

Nothing lasts for ever. "Such a thing again, and you go!" was the last shot from the old lady's citadel at the servant. And her first at himself was, "Now you!" He accepted the challenge.

"Where is Marianne?" But an attack of coughing stopped the old woman's reply; and when it subsided, and left him free to repeat his question, he re-worded it, "Where is my wife?"

"My daughter is not your wife."

"Very well, grandmamma, let's pretend she isn't. Where is your daughter? Where's Marianne?"

"What do you want with her?" The speech and the speaker are sullen, dogged, and in deadly earnest. If Challis plays any impish tricks--and he isn't taking the old cat seriously; witness that malicious twinkle in his eye!--there will be an explosion, and a bad one.

"What do I want with her? Why, of course, to come back and live in Sin with me, like a dutiful wife. Stop a bit, though, grandmamma! Perhaps you don't know about Marianne's letter--the letter she left for me when she bolted off yesterday! Do you, or don't you?"

"I refuse to be catechized. I am in my daughter's confidence, and I know exactly what she has written and what she has not written." The suggestion was that Challis's report would be untrustworthy. She seemed to warm to her subject. "Marianne has told me everything, and she has my fullest concurrence in the step she has taken."

"Then I suppose," says Challis, with irritation, for the old lady's fangs are beginning to tell, "that you are giving your 'fullest concurrence' to her carrying away my children?"

The inverted commas in Challis's voice are caught at. "Yes--you may sneer, and you may repeat my words! You may despise me, Mr. Alfred Challis, because I am only an old woman. But I tell you this, and you can believe it or not, as you like--that in the eyes of Holy Writ those children are not yours, and any lawyer will tell you they are not yours."

"I don't see how more than one lawyer can vouch personally for the paternity of either of the kids."

"I don't understand you."

"Never mind! Try to understand this, and tell my wife: that whether the children are mine or anyone else's--even the most respectable legal firm's in the City!--they are legally mine, and I intend to have them back."

"You know as well as I do that they are not legally yours. You know as well as I do that when you married Kate's sister you were committing an act forbidden in Holy Writ, and expressly condemned by Our Lord Himself. You know that your children are illegitimate children, and contrary to the Act of Parliament. Do not pretend you are ignorant of this, Alfred Challis. Be truthful for once!"

"I suppose my copy of the Bible isn't a recent edition; I must get one brought up to date. Or I might order one from the Times Book Club.... Oh no!--no doubt all you say is correct. I shall find the passage." A misunderstanding occurred here, owing to the old lady's deafness. An image generated in her mind had to be dispersed, of a Club of Freethinkers who had a copy of the Scriptures, certainly, but kept it in the passage, reserving the library shelves for Mock Litanies and the like. Challis's tendency to regard the whole thing as a joke revived somewhat over this. "No, no, grandmamma," said he, with something like a laugh; "no one has had anything to say against the Book Club, so far, on the score of Unsoundness. You misunderstood me. All I meant to say was that my recollections of Holy Writ seem to want polishing up. No doubt you're right! But the notion of Marianne having any right to appropriate my children--our children--why, the idea is simply too ridiculous to bear speaking of!"

"You can ask any lawyer."

"What lawyer ever told you such rubbish?"

"Mr. Tillingfleet."

"Mr. Tillingfleet deserves to be struck off the Rolls. When did Mr. Tillingfleet make this precious statement?"

"I suppose you fancy you know better than Mr. Tillingfleet?"

"When did he tell you this?"

"I can show you his letter if you like." Letter produced. Challis muttered that he didn't want to see it. But he took it, and made a visible parade of superficial reading, until he came to the end, when he appeared to re-read the last paragraph. He then went back, and re-read from the beginning, half aloud, skipping words.

"'Dear Madam reply to your esteemed ... hm-hm ... regret must repeat advice ... re matrimonial status ... hm-hm ... in no case can marriage of man with deceased wife's sister hold good in law, however pledged parties hold themselves ... hm-hm ... consequently legal dissolution impossible no legal contract existing ... old friend of late Mr. Craik ... excuse ... delicate position ... your daughter ... counsel moderation ... jealousy may be justified ... may be groundless....' Sensible chap, Tillingfleet!"

The widow of the late Mr. Craik snorted. "He was my husband's legal adviser," said she. How could he be other than a sensible chap?--said the snort. "Perhaps you will be kind enough to give your attention to what he says about Marianne's children."

"About our children, certainly!" Challis continued, reading more distinctly. "'With regard to your other question as to the relative claims of your son-in-law and daughter to the guardianship of their children, I am personally of opinion that as no legal marriage exists, the children are technically illegitimate, and this technical illegitimacy would bar any claim to guardianship on the part of Mr. Challis. How far any claim for maintenance could be sustained is another question, Mrs. Challis's object being, as I understand, to withdraw the children entirely from their father. On the justifiability of such a course I do not understand that my opinion is asked.' Sensible fellow, Tillingfleet!" said the reader. But with so plain a meaning that his hearer caught him up sharply.

"What do you mean to imply?"

"That Mr. Tillingfleet thinks you and Marianne a couple of fools. He all but says that your behaviour is unjustifiable, in his opinion...."

"His opinion was not asked."

"So he says. Hadn't you better ask him?"

"Certainly not. He does not know how you have behaved to your wife. It is a matter of which she alone can judge."

"How have I behaved to my wife?"

"You know, as well as I do."

"No doubt, and a great deal better. But you don't know as well as I do."

"I do not wish to talk any further. Have you anything further to say?"

"I wish to see Marianne and the children, and to know when they are coming home."

"I am here to speak for Marianne. She refuses to see you, or to give up her children to you. You will gain nothing by remaining here."

"Come, grandmamma, do be a little Christian-like, and help to make things comfortable again...."

"Christian-like indeed! What next?"

"Perhaps I used the wrong word. Couldn't you manage a little Heathenism for once, and be jolly? At any rate, grandmamma, tell me what the accusation is. The worst criminals are allowed to hear the indictment." Challis was just a shade uncandid in this, because he believed he knew the worst of the indictment. But he excused his conscience on the score of his right to any means of finding out whether his character, sadly soiled by that unfortunate letter business, had not been well smudged over with soot by Mrs. Eldridge into the bargain.

This conversation will have shown that grandmamma, though she had achieved a narrow-mindedness of a very choice quality, while preserving a virgin ignorance of the meaning of the popular teaching, or perversion of teaching, by which vernacular bigotries are usually fostered and nourished, was by no means a stupid person when she had an end to gain. Whether her end in the present case was the final separation of Marianne from her husband may be questioned. A working hypothesis of her motives might be that she merely wished to pay her son-in-law out for the slights he was always heaping--as she knew, while she could not understand or answer them--on her cherished booth in Vanity Fair. Whatever her ultimate object, she was unable to resist the opportunity of hitting hard that the culprit's application to hear the indictment afforded her.

"What the accusation is!" she echoed derisively. "Ask your Miss Judith what the accusation is. Ask her, and then look me in the face, Mr. Alfred Challis!" The old lady seemed quite vain of this formula of denunciation, for she picked up the missile and reloaded her arbalest. "Ask your fashionable friends--oh yes!--they look the other way, no doubt, but they have eyes in their heads, and can see for all that. Ask them, and then look me in the face, Mr. Alfred Challis! Ask your neighbours...."

"Mrs. Charlotte Eldridge?" asked Challis sharply.

"No, Alfred Challis!--not Mrs. Charlotte Eldridge only, but all the neighbours--ask them all! Ask them to say what they've seen...." But the good lady lost the luxury of her climax this time, because Challis interrupted.

"Could you mention any responsible householder who would tell me what I am accused of? I could call on my way back." Being thoroughly angry himself, he naturally spoke in a way that he knew would exasperate. This dry kind of speech was like a red rag to a bull in this old lady's case. Nothing is more infuriating than one's adversary's apparent contentment with mere words, left alone with their syntax, to shift for themselves. It makes one so conscious of one's own war-whoops, and one's occasional faulty expression of meaning, during attacks of uncontrolled anger.

"I am prepared for any evasion and prevarication from you, Alfred Challis. But I was not prepared--no, I was not prepared--for such an unblushing statement that you are kept in ignorance. Have I not told you plainly--have I not told you repeatedly--that this Miss Judith Arkroyd is what is complained of? Have I disguised anything? What I have said is the shameful, disgraceful truth. The TRUTH, Alfred Challis! Down on your knees and acknowledge it!" A bouquet of vital doctrines essential to salvation hung about this; the attitude of kneeling was especially telling. More of the same sort followed.

When a lull came, Challis spoke. "Am I to see Marianne, or am I not?" said he. "I am convinced she is here, and I have a right to see her." The old woman kept glum silence, and he repeated his words. Then she said: "You shall not see her. It is no use. You had better go." He then said, "I know she is here, because I saw her blue silk sunshade in the entry," and left the room, as though to verify his observation. At the stair-foot he paused, and called aloud to his wife: "Polly Anne, Polly Anne! Are you there?" No answer came, and then the old woman came running out, quite inarticulate with rage and coughing.

"Listen to me," said he, and his manner stopped her. "I am going. But you will do well to pay attention to what I am going to say to you. If you repeat any impudent falsehoods about Miss Arkroyd or any other lady--yes!--whether you make them yourself or get them from any other pigsty or gutter, you will place yourself within reach of the law. You had better talk to Tillingfleet about it. He seems a sensible chap. At any rate, he will be able to tell you that people have been ruined before now by the damages they have had to pay for circulating filthy slanders without foundation. So be careful, grandmamma! Good-night!"

He had been so self-restrained up to the moment when his anger broke out in speech that his worthy mother-in-law was taken completely aback by it. She remained so until the door closed behind him. It was then too late for any demonstration, and the disappointed guardian of family morals fell back into the house gobbling like a turkey-cock. Challis found Emma at the garden-gate, and gave her her half-crown of consolation. He received the impression that she had been sent out with orders to warn Martha and the children should they return, and head them off in time to prevent a meeting. He was afterwards sorry he had not entered into conversation with this girl, and made a friend of her. But the truth is it was impossible for his mind to receive the idea that his wife's resolution would be a lasting one; and he felt confident of a penitent letter in a day or two, and an amende honorable to himself, whether he deserved one or not, for suspicions which he persisted in looking at as false per se, although one or two circumstances, quite outside their radius, might be coaxed into court by a malicious prosecution to testify against him. Any other anticipation was mere nightmare.

But a day passed, and another, and many postmen's knocks, each with its exasperation of hope frustrated; and many cabs, that might have ended in the voices of the children shouting to the cabman, by permission, which gate to stop at. And a loneliness indescribable, so unlike the happy empty days one gets for work now and again when one's housemates troop away to some assured haven elsewhere, and write every day, if it's only a postcard. How Challis envied the splendid self-absorption of our old friend the cat! How he envied the sound of a happy freedom in the chronic controversy of the kitchen; always the same controversy, but possibly on various subjects! How happy the tradesmen's boys seemed!--how callous to the smallness of the orders!

Every day he wrote a line to Marianne, ignoring all that had passed. She would give way in time. If he persevered, one day she would be unable to resist the temptation to reply; it would be a sort of hypnotic suggestion, mechanically brought about. It was on the day after his last visit to Tulse Hill that he made up his mind to try whether a letter to Judith would not procure one from her that would do some good. It could not make matters worse.

Oh, this strangely compounded clay, Man!--that any story should have to tell it! But it is true, too. This Alfred Challis, who, face to face with such grim reality of wreck at home, had as good as escaped from subjection to the witchcraft that had brought it about, had no sooner taken up his pen to write to its author, than he was again subject to the experience that has been spoken of as the soul-brush. All his consciousness--which was intense--of his own folly could not prevent him attaching a special force to the first words of his letter. Surely "Dear Miss Arkroyd" might have been a pure formality, just as much as "Dear Grandmamma" would have been if he had brought himself to write to that veteran practitioner in discord-brewing. It was no such thing. A magic hung about the three words, with a suggestion in it of a phrase of music, or a whiff of burnt incense. The image of Judith crept back promptly into his mind at permission given, suggesting disloyalties to his hope that Marianne would quarrel with her mamma, and take a reasonable view of the position--come back and reinstate life.

Why, in heaven's name--he half asked himself--if it was to be like this, if Marianne was going to persist in her unreasonable jealousy, should not he take advantage of the freedom she forced upon him, of the legal pretext of an irregular marriage that assumed the right of Law and Usage to cancel a promise given and taken mutually, believed by each giver to come from the heart of the other? He would have flung from him angrily any suggestion of an advantage to come to himself from capping to a dirty Orthodoxy--the words are his, not the story's--from any joining in the World's dance; any acquiescence in the mops and mows of the Performing Classes; any obeisance to a great organization which--when it suited him--he chose to consider a mere mechanism for keeping the funds up and the fun going, and the distribution among the sanctioned of unlimited stars and garters and loaves and fishes. But if it were forced upon him in the face of his persistent repudiation of it, if the other contracting party flaunted it in his face, might not he avail himself of this pretext?--use a disgraceful shuffle in the service of truth? Was he not almost in honour bound to do so, to that lady from whom his evasive declaration of passion had elicited what was at least a strong disclaimer of indifference to himself?

But Challis only half asked himself these questions, because he knew the answer. He knew that he knew the difference between Right and Wrong, and he knew that his wife had Right on her side--not much, but some--and he suspected that he had Wrong on his--not some, but much. So he finished his letter to Judith and posted it.

Judith wrote in answer to Challis's letter, and he forwarded an enclosure it contained, addressed to his wife. It was returned to him, torn in three or four pieces, by the next post. He joined it up and read it, and thought it the most sweet, conciliatory, angelic human document he had ever read. But, then, he was a man!

He went more than once to Tulse Hill after this, without succeeding in seeing Marianne. The third time he found the house empty, placed in the hands of an agent, who said in reply to all inquiries that his instructions were limited to dealing with the house. He was, he said, a House-Agent. But he would undertake that letters should be forwarded. He evidently enjoyed being civil, so satiated was he with the offensiveness of his position.

Mrs. Eldridge called on him as a peacemaker, having in tow her husband, who winked at him over her shoulder, uninterpretably. He said to her, subduing his anger well: "I would not have seen you, Charlotte Eldridge, if there had not been something I have been wishing to say to you. I cannot prove it, but I am as certain of it as that I stand here that it is you that have poisoned my wife's mind against me, and have filled it with every sort of nasty misinterpretation of a perfectly innocent friendship. You have known absolutely nothing of the lady whom you have thought fit to malign as a means of maligning me.... No, I know I have no means of knowing that you have ever said a single word against her. But my object in seeing you is to tell you that I am convinced that you have. I am convinced that Marianne has shown you my correspondence without any warranty--and for that she may be to blame--and that you have read into it meanings she never would have dreamed of ascribing to it, left to herself. I am, in short, sure that it is you--you--you at the bottom of all this mischief, and I tell you honestly that after you have left this door I shall not be sorry if I never see you or hear of you again. Good-bye!"

Mrs. Eldridge had thrown in denials; and when her husband, moved to eloquence, had interposed with "Come, I say now, Master Titus, ain't 'nasty misinterpretation' coming it rather strong?" had briefly directed him to be quiet till he was spoken to. She had then placed herself on oath, offering an extemporized solemnity if called on. "I am ready to go down on my knees here and now, Alfred Challis, and to call on God, who will one day be your judge and mine, to bear witness that this is a cruel falsehood! He knows"--here she threw in upper-case type freely--"that all my wish, all my effort, has been towards conciliation and peace...."

At this point Challis interrupted her, saying curtly: "Then your efforts have not been very successful. I do not see that we shall gain anything by talking any more about it. Good-bye again!" This occurred before the exodus from Glenvairloch, or Challis might have been less unconciliatory, with an eye to keeping open a possible channel of communication with his wife, even though it would involve communication with a woman whom he now thoroughly detested.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXXVIII

THE EMPTY HERMITAGE. A COMPROMISE ABOUT BOB. HOW MRS. STEPTOE HAD NOTHING TO CONCEAL. HOW CINTILLA CAUGHT MR. CHALLIS. CALYPSO'S RUG ISLAND. GOOD-BYE! PROMISE NOT TO COME TO BIARRITZ! THE SKEIN WOUND

The unhappy author hung on persistently at the Hermitage, in the face of the candid neglect of every duty by the servant who had given warning, and the uncandid pretences of Mrs. Steptoe that, in the absence of her mistress, which she treated as a thing de die in diem, the one object of her life, deep-rooted in her heart of hearts, was the comfort and well-being of her master. Her catering took the form so common in the British household, of a joint twice a week, twice re-incarnate as hash and mince, and a nice little bit of rump-steak on the odd day out. Her potatoes were hygrometric, owing to their being the wrong sort--there was great latitude for physical defect in that! Her other vegetables--lettuce, cabbage, what not!--had all lost their hearts, whatever was not stalk being flamboyant exfoliation. Even her brockilo sprouts were diffuse, and her cauliflowers wept. The bread was always second-hand--owing to the price of flour, said the baker's man, and he knew--and The Cheese was an affliction, a nightmare, which was supposed to be American or Cheddar, but whose days in the States or in Somersetshire were long, long ago.

Why did Challis endure it, when he might have thrown off all disguise and lived at his Club, where there is a capital library to write in, which nobody ever uses? Simply because of a pleasant dream he flattered his mind with, of a cab with luggage atop, and a sort of revised Marianne alighting, and the voices of his children. He was lying low for the fulfilment of this dream, without ever saying aloud to his heart that it was a possibility. Or, rather, he was fending against her return to the damper of an empty house. That would be altogether too sickening.

It was horribly dreary in the empty house. How he would have rejoiced to hear but one short torrent of unruly fury, but one complaining whimper, from the unrevised Marianne of the past! But he was given over to the Silences and the intermittent sounds that drive them home--the tradesmen's boys--the postmen's knocks. This could not last for ever, though! Bob would be back from school--was overdue, in fact--and then he would keep watch and ward in his father's absence. Challis favoured an image in his mind of a hospitable Bob, welcoming his revised step-mother, and risking statements about his father's return in fabulously short periods. He devised a plan for Bob to ring him up at the Club from the call-station at East Putney.

* * * * *

He had a bad half-hour when Bob did return, knowing nothing, and found him the sole tenant of the Hermitage. He thought it best to take his stand on Mrs. Steptoe's security of indefinite to-morrows, treat the matter lightly, and assure Bob that his mater and sisters would come back in the course of a few days. Bob accepted the statement in view of the fact that he didn't know yet that his phonograph, reluctantly forsaken when he returned to school, had not suffered from neglect. Presently Challis heard the diseased voice of the hideous instrument, dwelling on the fascinations of a yellow girl; and, for once, felt grateful to its inventor. But it was only a short respite. Bob soon suspected something seriously wrong, and had to be told. Not the whole!--that was impossible; what could his father have told him? But he had to have his painful experience of a first family disruption, and to understand that the sort of thing that might happen in other chaps' homes was also possible in his own.

Challis, who was still writing disheartened letters to his wife, addressing them through the Tulse Hill house-agency, told of Bob's return, and earnestly begged her to make it possible for the boy to see his little sisters again. He received an answer, reposted by the agent, with only the Tulse Hill postmark. It was written by her mother, and contained a proposal for a sort of truce as far as Bob was concerned. Subject to a written guarantee that he himself would keep his distance, Bob might come. Then he wrote earnestly and at length, dwelling on the cruelty of his wife's misjudgment of his actions, reproaching her with meanly taking advantage of a legal pretext to deprive him of his children, and imploring her, for their sake and his, only to consent to one interview. He was horribly embarrassed in writing this letter by the unwritten law--so his mind named it as he wrote--which dictates that every word that is written or spoken on this odious subject of men and women must be an equivocation or a shuffle. How could he formulate a phrase that would convey the truth to Marianne; acknowledge his aberration, and define its extent, without letting loose the whole gutter-brood of Charlotte Eldridges to point the finger of denunciation at him; and, worst of all, to squirt at Judith, skunk-wise, and run away? And if he assumed what so many would be ready to accept as a sound view, that an attack of amorous intoxication didn't count, and denied fully and roundly that he had ever been guilty of any transgression at all--why, then, in the first place it would be a lie, in the second, the troop of skunks would only resort to another secretion. "You know, dear, a man always holds himself bound to deny, for the woman's sake." It was characteristic of Challis that he all but heard these words from the image his mind made of Charlotte Eldridge on a sofa, shading its eyes from the light with that confounded pretty hand of hers. "I see no way out of Charlotte Eldridge," said he in despair. He ended his letter by an ill-chosen phrase, which put his head in the lion's mouth. "Is a man never to be forgiven," it said, "because he is momentarily overtaken by passion for a lady under exceptional circumstances?" Mrs. Eldridge made her teeth meet over that expression, be sure of that!

The outcome of the negotiations that followed was that Bob spent the last half of his long vacation with his mater and sisters and grandmamma at Broadstairs, which was the place of retirement chosen by the last-named lady, to be out of her son-in-law's way. It was recognized by Mrs. Steptoe when Master Bob said where he was a-going.

"Well, now, Master Robert, to think you should go to Broadstairs of all places in the world! That near Ramsgate it is!"

"No, it isn't!" said Bob. "It's near Margate. I'm right, and you're wrong." But a compromise was effected over a railway-map in Bradshaw, very much tore across.

"That is where I saw your dear mamma, Master Robert, afore ever you was born or thought of. Ramsgate!"

The amenities of controversy were not Bob's strong point. He gave a prolonged shout of derision. "You never saw my dear mamma! Why, she died before I was born!" It was a hastily constructed sentence, and reflected very little credit on Rugby. You may recall Stony Stratford, and the way some person suffered from insect-bites there?

But Mrs. Steptoe repeated her statement, firmly but respectfully. Not only had she seen Bob's mamma, but his papa. "Very well, then, I'll tell the Governor," said Bob, and kept his word before he took his departure, two days later.

"What's this story my boy has, Mrs. Steptoe, about your seeing his mother and me at Ramsgate?" It was Sunday morning, and Challis was pretending to look at a series of volumes known as "The Books," in each of which a string of misstatements appeared, sanctioned at intervals by a rubber stamp. Challis made some pretence of adding up a total, to give Mrs. Steptoe time, and then repeated his question. "Yes--Master Bob. About Ramsgate. Where were you? I can't recollect you." His mind was seeking some younger Mrs. Steptoe among the children on the sands, far away from her lodging-house.

"You hardly would, sir!" said she. "I was attending to the house where you was visiting. I had undertook the cooking at my aunt's sister's--name of Cantrip...."

"Can't recollect Cantrip."

"No, sir, not likely! But perhaps Hallock?... name of lady and gentleman stoppin' the season.... Coal-merchant, I believe, in a considerable way of business." This to keep the whole transaction on its proper level in Society.

"I remember Hallock," says Challis, reminiscent. "Man lost his hat over the cliff!... Oh yes--but I remember!--it was his house we dined at...."

"That was the occasion, sir.... The Baker desired me to say, sir, that he was sorry, but it should not occur again...."

"Never mind the Baker now, Mrs. Steptoe. Tell me about Mr. Hallock. I can't remember you, but I suppose you were there?"

"Not all along, but in and out of the room. I was divided with the kitchen. I remember the young lady very well." Mrs. Steptoe felt it would be safer to leave the young lady's name alone. The ground was shaky under her feet. In fact, she would rather the matter should never have come to Challis's knowledge.

His perception was growing of the oddity of Mrs. Steptoe knowing anything about it. "I can't understand," he said. "That youngster said you saw his mother. How came you to know the young lady was ... how came you to connect...." He hesitated over the description of Kate. To say "the lady whom I subsequently married" would have been making Mrs. Steptoe too much of a family confidante.

Now, that good woman had no objection to being of importance, but she wanted to keep safe, first and foremost. She had nothing to confess to personally; was, in fact, blameless. Why not simply tell all she knew? She took that course, telling all that happened about the photograph; but suggesting that the whole occurrence had been slight, trivial, colloquial--rather than otherwise hinting at surprise that Mr. Challis had known nothing about it. Why had she not told him? He made the inquiry, but interrupted her disclaimer of any locus standi in the matter, with an admission that he had asked a nonsensical question. Why should she have done anything but hold her tongue? She was quite an outsider. Well!--leave her outside. That was the obvious course.

"Thank you, Mrs. Steptoe," said Challis. "I fancy I remember that photograph.... Oh, the Baker!--yes! Tell him to be very careful that it doesn't occur again.... No, nothing else. That's all; good-morning!"

But his face, always grave now, was graver than ever as he hunted through the photograph albums he disinterred from the chiffonier Charlotte Eldridge had exploited so successfully, and got no success for himself. He found what he supposed to be the spaces these Ramsgate portraits had occupied, but nothing in them. They were two or three sudden blanks in a well-packed book. Marianne had taken them away.

For the first time since the rupture he felt undisguisedly angry with his wife. It was too bad!--what had he done that she should be so secretive and mistrustful? Why could she not frankly ask him for an explanation? After all, it was a subject he would have been so glad she should be in his confidence about, and one he had only kept back from her to spare her a needless disquiet. To get absolution for himself he resumed the whole story of his silence and its reasons. He failed to see how differently the thing had presented itself to her.

What would Kate have said to him--thought of him--if, when he first came to her mother's house, he had made a clean breast of the whole story to any of the family! As long as she kept silence, surely he was bound to do so? And then, when Kate was in her grave, or in Heaven, according to the immediate exigency of speech-without-thought among believers in God-knows-what--all this is Challis's language--when, anyhow, her demise had qualified her to be spoken of in a hushed voice, was he to intrude a revelation of a transaction that would have been at least out of keeping with the ideal Marianne's memory had made of a beloved and lamented elder sister? Then, as time went on, and no one seemed a penny the worse that the whole thing should be forgotten, the lock that shut the secret in got rusty, as such locks do, and Challis felt far from certain that he could turn the key at all, if he tried.

Besides, for this last five years there had been another cause for silence. Challis had not been entirely without tidings of the man Keith Horne in his subsequent career. He had identified him--to his own satisfaction, at least--with the central figure of a hideous story told to him by a gaol-chaplain, an observer to whom he was indebted for much material for copy of a most popular sort. This particular atrocity was unfit for publication, even in a modern novel, and made Challis feel grateful to its miserable perpetrator for what would otherwise have been the crowning act in a series of betrayals. He sometimes even felt uncertain whether he ought not to feel unreserved thankfulness, and ascribe credit to him for what may have been the only noble motive of his life. He had endeavoured to trace the ex-convict, but without success.

Perhaps the way in which Challis regarded this man's relation with his first wife and himself may suggest itself from the gaol-chaplain's having laid great stress on the interest this man excited in his colleague, the surgeon of the gaol. If the patching up of an absolutely rotten profligate, that he might complete a term of penal servitude and return to his sins, was a thing to be desired, then that surgeon had a right to his triumph. That does not come into the story. But those who have given any attention to the pathology of disorders incidental to the ways of destroying body and soul adopted by this wretched creature will be able to understand why every year that added to Master Bob's stature, and increased his impudence, without a trace of any visible taint of constitution, was one more nail in the coffin of a painful misgiving, which Challis was only too glad should never have been shared by the mother of Bob's sisters. As Marianne never came to a knowledge of the ugly story, we may dismiss it finally, having only cited it because it appears to supply a justification of Challis's persistent concealment from her of her sister's former marriage.

* * * * *

The story draws a long breath of relief as it returns to Bob, who had come back from school fuming with an uncharitable jealousy against a boy named Tillotson, who had two Camberwell Beauties, while Bob had only one. So the few days he spent at home were chiefly employed tearing over Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park with a butterfly-net in a tropical heat. Then he ate his dinner too fast, and rushed away to his phonograph, at whose maw he gloated over incidents of Love and Jealousy in the plantations of Louisiana. As his father allowed him to do exactly what he liked, he was able to give full vent to his devotion to this pestilent abomination. He even wound it up to stand at his bed's head and soothe his first sleep with "Bill Bailey."

But when Bob departed for Broadstairs, the desolation was worse than ever. Challis met it boldly, writing persistently all day, and spending the evening at his Club. He was rather glad town was so empty; for, indeed, a week or so after the boy said good-bye to his governor, hugging him as a French or Italian boy would have done, no two folk who met seemed ready to accept each other as actual. "You don't mean to say you're here!" was the commonest greeting. But the incredulity of each gave way before the other's attestation of his existence.

Challis's disbelief in the presence in Grosvenor Square of any of The Family was so strong that he had no misgivings whatever on the point when he knocked at the door with drawn cards in his hand, and set phrases of inquiry on his tongue. He felt so reassured by the opacity of the closed windows, parading the emptiness of the mansion, and the insouciance of the nondescript who looked up from the area at him before coming to the door, that he never doubted that his visit would end as he himself at any rate believed he intended it to do. Was he glad or sorry--did he know himself?--when a light step caught him up at the street-corner, and a musical voice said, "Oh, please, Mr. Challis!" It was Cintilla.

Cintilla and Challis had always been on the most familiar terms, so if he did take her dimpled chin between his thumb and forefinger before saying, "Oh, please what, Miss Tenterden?" the butcher's boy need not have pretended to look the other way ostentatiously. Tenterden, by-the-bye, was the little maid's real name--Clemency Tenterden.

"Please I was to catch you and bring you back for Miss Judith."

"You don't mean that Miss Judith is in town?"

"Oh no!--not really in town. Why, you should see the state the house is in! And Mrs. Protheroe has gone to her brother James's widow at Bridport." Mrs. Protheroe was the housekeeper.

"We won't dispute about terms, Miss Tenterden. I gather that Miss Judith is not technically in town. I suppose she's going on somewhere--that's it, isn't it?"

"Oh yes--and, please, it's such fun, Mr. Challis. She's going to Biarritz to stay, and take me, and I'm to learn to speak French." Evidently there was one little maid in this world having a high old time, and determined to make the most of it.

There was an island on a rug in the back-parlour--the sole outbreak of visible furniture in a wilderness of brown holland, and rolled-up carpets, and chandeliers in bags, and pictures whose backs provoked an interest none had ever felt in their faces. "Like some females," thought Challis, as he picked his way to the island through the débris. On the island was its Calypso, the only member of The Family in town.

Judith was as beautiful as ever, as she extended both hands to him. "I'm so glad the child caught you, Scroop," said she. Absolute self-possession!--Estrildis herself could not have been more collected. "But I'm sorry for things. Now sit down and let us talk reasonably.... Yes--there!" This was to Cintilla, fixing a nicely chosen distance for Challis, neither too far nor too near. Cintilla would have liked to supply a chair a little nearer; she had no idea of people being so artificial.

Challis's self-possession was far from absolute. In fact, he was tremulous. "You were good to send that letter," he said. But the last word sounded like "letterm," as he checked his speech short.

"You were going to say 'Miss Arkroyd,'" said she. "At least, do not let us be prigs. Call me Judith--at least, for now."

Could it matter, either way? "You were good to send that letter, Judith," he repeated. "But, as I told you, it did no good--has done no good." For he had written as much, and some more, to Royd. But his pen had always stopped short of a full account of his desolation.

"I suppose we're all human," said she absently; and the remark seemed to want application. "What leads you to suppose she will never forgive you? What she says?" Challis shook his head. "Her manner?... No?--then what?"

"You don't understand.... Well!--I have never told you, certainly. Marianne ... I have never succeeded in seeing her. She and her mother have gone away from London, and in order that my boy may not be separated from his sisters, I have been obliged to promise not to follow them." He explained the position more fully.

Judith laughed, and Challis heard nothing sinister in her laugh. But, then, he was on Calypso's island.

"You are too soft-hearted, Scroop. Really, you must forgive my laughing! But you are so very--Arcadian!" Challis waited visibly for an explanation. "Couldn't you see that what this dear good woman will want, when she gets tired, will be a golden bridge to come back across? Something to save her face! She'll never admit she was wrong. But for the sake of the children, don't you see? We are in the region of high unselfish motive at once."

Marianne would never admit she was wrong! Very likely; but the point was, was she wrong? Challis caught himself almost taking sides with Penelope against Calypso. The point was danger-point in these seas. Never was a stranger clash in a human soul than the one Challis was conscious of when he half resented the tone in which the woman he had a passion for spoke of the one for whom he had an affection. We had nearly written "the one whom he loved." But surely he loved Judith?--or what is the vocabulary of the Poets worth? The ambiguities of language have been beforehand with the story, and it cannot stop to préciser them.

"Marianne will not persist a moment after she is convinced she is wrong." He spoke a little stiffly--almost a mild censure of Calypso. But as a set-off he took for granted that Penelope was wrong, past contention.

"Perhaps I should have said she will never believe she was wrong. Better than 'admit.'" This was spoken with placid indifference. One might have thought the speaker absorbed in the flashing of brilliants on the beautiful hand she was holding to catch a sunset-ray from the back-window; the palm, as she shifted it about, showing each finger outlined with transmitted rosy light. Challis tried to reason away its witchery--to quash its jurisdiction. But it was a fatal hand. "Go on telling me," said its owner. "Tell me more about Marianne. What do you suppose she thinks?"

"I have no right to suppose she thinks any more than she said in her letter. I told you in my letter all I think I had any right to repeat."

"And I have no right to be inquisitive. But the letter spoke plainly. I am convinced of it."

"The letter was indignant with me for showing her letter to you before, as she supposed, I had read it myself."

"Before, as she supposed." This was mere repetition of the phrase, as a writer from dictation might have spoken. She turned her eyes full on him. "You hadn't read it, Scroop," she said.

"I had to the best of my belief, at the time I showed it to you." He is a little nettled, and she sees it. He embarks on self-justification--a thing one should never do. "There was not a single word in what I supposed the letter contained that you might not have read. My statement that I had not read the words on the back was entitled to some consideration. I never put anything of importance away in a postscript, where it may be overlooked." He stopped abruptly, feeling irrelevant.

"Because you are an eminent author! We mustn't forget that." Judith's laugh lightened the conversation. "No, no, Scroop! you haven't got a leg to stand on, and you had better admit it. You oughtn't to have shown me the letter."

"Very well--admitted! But admit, too, that I have made amends as far as I could. It seems to me that a mountain has been made out of a molehill...."

Challis stopped suddenly, very ill at his ease. Judith, with a look half amused, half expectant, waited. She evidently was not going to help. Indeed, she would not have found it easy. Each knew that the conversation was being sustained artificially by attaching undue weight to the fact that Marianne's sole ground of complaint was this showing of her letter. Each knew how much more there was behind; how strong Marianne's indictment might have been with a full knowledge of the facts. After all, this blaming her for unjust action, on imperfect data, which would have been just had the whole come to light, was the merest quibble, and both knew it.

Judith broke the silence first, but only with what amounted to a declaration that she would not help. "There must be a beautiful sunset somewhere," was all it came to. And then matters were relieved by the silvery voice of Cintilla. Might she take away the tea-things? Yes--she might. While she did so, the talk turned on the legal question of Marianne's right to capture the children. Challis had, he said, consulted more than one legal friend on the subject, and they were all in a tale. The children were illegitimate, and therefore belonged to their mother. He got some satisfaction, evidently, from shredding a conspicuous absurdity of human law--why should children be claimable at all by a father who was a mere predecessor et præterea nihil--just a parent? He himself had made his title good to these two kids by his share in fostering them. Had his claim been a legal one only, he would have foregone it to make way for that of their natural owner. But he touched the matter very lightly. It did not outlast the removal of the tea-things.

Then Judith, going to the window, stood looking out, watching the light die from a cloud whose under side had broken into ridges of rosy flame. Its last ridge no longer saw the sun, when she turned slowly, coming back to a seat nearer Challis than the one she had occupied.

"This will be good-bye," she said. "I am going to Biarritz, and shall be away till January certainly. I did not want to go without seeing you again. So I was glad when the child came running up to say it was you, and shouldn't she catch you?" Her speech was redolent of self-command; no concessions to the pathos of parting.

"May I write to you?"

"I was going to ask you to do so. I shall hope to hear that your home is happy again, and that all goes well. This sort of thing has happened before--oh dear, how often!"

As Challis sat during the short silence that followed, not looking at all at his companion, one might almost have fancied that he shrank away from her, as one afraid. He found a voice to answer her, but not easily.

"I will write," he said. "And, believe me, Judith, in what I am going to say now I am speaking truth. I look with hope to the softening of my poor wife's heart, to the sound of her return to my empty home, and the voices of my babies...."

"Why should you suppose I doubt you? Of course you do!"

"Yes, but, dearest!--I must call you so, or call you something with some heart in it; pardon me!--can I tell the reason? Can the reason be told?... Oh yes, of course, I know what you are going to say--it is reason enough that she is my wife, that the kids are my kids, that the home is my home. So it is; but there is more reason than that, and I am at a loss to tell it.... What?"

But Judith left whatever it was unsaid, and exchanged it for "No--go on!"

"Perhaps I do wrong when I use the only words I can find when I say that I long for Marianne back again to help me against you? Ought I not to say to help me against myself? Where is the fault in you that you are what you are? You are blameless, at least. It is I that must needs love you!"

And perhaps the story does wrong to allow a suspicion that, in the heart that beautiful face belonged to, was a half-formed thought that the speaker was even more Arcadian than the owner of both had suspected. But it creeps in--this suspicion--with the telling of a smile kept under by lips on the watch to check it. One thing may be relied on: Miss Arkroyd was not the least agitated.

Challis saw nothing of her face, as he never raised his eyes, and his face was half averted. He continued: "I cannot help an experience that no one will believe. I have no appeal against it. But I tell you this--that when I came home after ... after that evening at Royd, when I forgot myself and told the truth, for a few hours I forgot you too. As I sit here now, it seems to me a thing absolutely incredible. Even when Marianne turned against me on grounds that seemed to me almost a pretext, no memory of you or my folly--call it so if you will--anything you like!--no memory came back to me. Indeed, it is almost as though I had been two men by turns." He raised his eyes to hers, with a slowly drawn breath, as of fatigue, from the turmoil of his own feelings. If there was any of the smile left then, she was in time to cancel it.

But she hardly said anything. A mere run of the vowels of a sentence, as one speaks through a yawn, is not speech. It just made him say "What?" but evidently had no share in the question she replied to him with, and stopped in the middle of, "And what was it then made you?..." But the words she had decided on ignoring were "How funny men are!" Let us hope there was some affectation of indifference in this.

Challis understood her question. "What made my disorder break out again?" he repeated. "I can't fix the time. But now that I have been forced to discard one of my selves--the one that hoped for the calm of his old home life again ... no, Judith, indeed there have been many happy times...."

"Why? Did you think I doubted it?"

"I wasn't sure.... But I had not finished. Now that my hope has been simply strangled, I have to be my other self, in self-defence. I tell you--I must tell you--that the thought of you is with me every hour of the day, and what have I to help me to fight against it? Even my boy is away, and what adds to the cruelty of the position is that, will I nill I, I have to feel glad of his absence. Because when he was with me I was in constant terror of being asked for explanations which I could not give. A girl of his age would have been far easier to tell it to."

"Do you think so? I feel as if I could tell him about it all--much, much easier!" During some chat over the fact, and its strangeness, that the tongue of either sex is freest in speech with its opposite, on this one particular subject of Love, Challis felt, as they sat on in the growing twilight, that the soul-brush was at work again with a vengeance. The utter satisfaction of his thirst for speech about himself and his plight was so much sheer nectar to him while it lasted. If he paid for it after, at least his draught should be a deep one now. He confessed to the extent to which his constant home-life in the past had stood in the way of the formation of intimate friendships, and that he really had no one he could confide in. "I have a second cousin," said he--he was always absurd, sooner or later--"who has an impediment and a wig, and is slightly deaf. No, I really could not take him into my confidence." Judith said: "Of course you couldn't; I see that." "Besides," he continued, "he wears spats, and goes through courses of treatment for dyspepsia at Cheltenham." And Judith said again: "I see."

"The only man I have spoken to about it," continued Challis, "is Athelstan Taylor. Well, I suppose he's about the only man I know that I could speak to. You know he came to see me straight away. You told him?"

"Yes, I told him. I showed him my letter--the one I wrote to your wife. He said I could not possibly write a better one. And she tore it up and sent it back?"

"She did. You know he went to try and see her, and only succeeded in getting at the old hag, her mother. I had built on his being a parson--thought it might be some use for once. But I suppose he was the wrong sort somehow--out of the wrong cuvée."

"Did he give offence over the--the Deceased Wife's Sister question?"

"Why, yes! The hag said he ought to be unfrocked for saying he didn't care a straw about the legal question, and only wanted to clear up what seemed a painful misunderstanding. The cloth fell through, and the old body drove him out with religious hoots."

"There's a thing you won't mind my asking?..."

"Go on!"

"People are saying--political people--that the Bill will pass the Lords next summer, and that then all past marriages of the sort will be legalized, because it will be retrospective--I believe that's the proper word. Suppose it passes, what shall you do then?"

"Get the kids back, of course! And then Polly Anne will come to her senses. But she will--she will, you know--before that."

"Suppose she laid claim to having annulled her marriage, while she still had a legal right to do so?"

"It wouldn't be allowed. She's a woman. Women's claims are not allowed in law-courts. It's heads Law wins, tails they lose.... Yes!--I should stoop to take advantage of it in this case."

"Perhaps you would be right, this once. We must hope it will pass."

"I do hope it--with most of my heart. Do you believe me? Can you believe me, in the face of what I have said to you?" For Challis knew quite well that this profession of a hope was only what he knew he would be able to say when the soul-brush stopped, and that he said it now mechanically. Wait till he was off Calypso's island!

Judith left his question unanswered; put it aside, rather. "I suppose you know it's all settled about Frank and Sibyl?" she said. Oh yes--Challis knew. When would it be? As soon after Christmas as possible, Judith supposed. An interruption--Cintilla with a letter--was not unwelcome. But she needn't light up; when Mr. Challis was gone would do. "That was a broad hint, Scroop," said Calypso, lying back in her chair with the unopened letter in that destructive hand fallen idly on her lap.

But in a few moments, when he took the hint and made a move towards departure, she rose. And if the truth must be told, she went quite as near a good stretch and a shake as such high breeding as hers could allow itself. It did not matter; her grace and beauty, perhaps her dressmaker, negatived the action. That bodice was perfect in cut. "You know, Scroop, that this is good-bye?" she said. And then in reply to his assent: "We won't be mawkish over it, please! I want you to make me a promise, and keep it.... Well, yes!--I'll tell you what it is. It would hardly be fair to make you promise in the dark. Promise not to come to Biarritz!" Challis hesitated, but promised. Judith laughed. "I was right, you see," she said. "You would have asked about trains at Cook's to-morrow."

There they stood, in the half-dark! Was Calypso saying to herself: "Now, can I trust this man to break his promise?" Was Challis asking himself, did she mean him to keep it?

In the end she spoke first, with a sudden movement that implied an end to disguise. "Oh, dear, how silly one is! Why should we not speak plain? After all, we are alive, and grown up." Yet it seemed difficult, too, and came with an effort. "Listen to me, Scroop, and don't try to say things--because it does no good. You and I have to say good-bye, and mean it. We are best apart, for both our sakes. You as good as said but now that you would forget me if Marianne would help. That is what it came to; don't deny it!" Challis felt that his attempt to lay his soul bare had failed; that he was being misinterpreted. But he had a poor case; silence was safest. She continued: "It is not as if I were prepared to quarrel with my family for your sake. I certainly would not for anyone else's, if that is any satisfaction to you. But suppose I were, have you asked yourself what course would be open to us?... Oh yes!--I am talking like a lawyer; but a woman has to be practical when her life is at stake.... Well!--what could you do? Ignore your marriage, under the false warranty of a law we both disallow, and make a sort of Gretna Green business of it next spring?..."

"Why next spring? I don't see how the time comes in."

"Foolish man! You haven't thought the matter out. Just think of it now. Suppose that Bill were to pass next session--or next whatever it is--while we are arranging this escapade? ... what would you do then, please?"

"I can't look at it in that--concrete way."

"Because it puts you in a fix." She had a half-hearted laugh for man's superior wisdom, with his eyes closed to all practical issues. Then her voice got a sudden tone. "Come, we must part, you and I! There is nothing else for it. It is all nonsense about your wife. She will come to her senses. She will have to, if the Bill passes."

"I should not try to compel her against her will."

"Are you sure? Might it not be your duty to the children?... Now, don't let's talk about it any more. It must come to good-bye in the end...." Her words hung fire, but she kept her self-control admirably; no one could have called her excited, much less hysterical. Then she said, in a quick, subdued voice: "I shall always think of our good time--before all this--as one of the happiest times of my life. Now good-bye!"

Why could the man not shake hands and go, without more ado? Of course, that would have been the correct form--left his cards--sent his compliments to The Family--bon voyage!--all that sort of thing! Well!--perhaps the woman did not mean him to.

What happened was this--that is, this is all the story needs: that Judith repeated decisively, "Good-bye!" and Challis said never a word. But he had her hands in his, and it was some slight emphasis in his clasp, or some little turn a bystander would not have seen, from which she shrank back, saying: "No--or listen! Promise me again you will not come to Biarritz." To which he replied: "I promise." Then she said: "Very well, then--on those terms say good-bye how you like."

Then it was that Challis made matters ten times worse, ten times harder to deal with in that period of his life that followed. It is a curious thing that one good long kiss--a transaction that when in a frolic has absolutely no meaning whatever--should acquire from its concomitants a force to cling about the memory, and in a sense to warp the understanding, of its executant--the only word we can find at a short notice. It did, in this case, and possibly Calypso meant it should do so all along--administered her little dose of nectar with a full knowledge of its powers as an intoxicant. Indeed, if Miss Arkroyd had it in her heart through all this last interview to complete the winding of that skein she began a twelvemonth back, she could scarcely have handled the thread more cleverly.

It is not for this story to decide what the young lady had in her heart. For all it knows, she may have felt either triumphant, disgusted, or indifferent, when she saw the name of Mr. Alfred Challis the author--"Titus Scroop" in a parenthesis--in the list of recent arrivals at Biarritz, and did not mention the fact to her hostess or any of her friends. But she met Mr. Challis on the esplanade next day, and introduced him to them equably as a friend of her father's. She must have forgiven him his broken promise, or ignored it.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter XXXIX

OF THE NEWS MR. ELPHINSTONE TOLD MRS. PROTHEROE. HOW CHALLIS HAD FOLLOWED JUDITH TO MENTONE. YOUNG MRS. CRAIK AND HER DEAD DICKY-BIRD. HOW CHALLIS BECAME A KNIGHT

When Miss Arkroyd came back to her sister's wedding in January it was not to Grosvenor Square, but Royd Hall. A wedding in London in midwinter would have been too awful. Fancy being married in a thick fog! Thus it happened that Grosvenor Square remained packed in brown holland and carpetless until the Family came back from abroad in April. The middle of that month saw the wrappers off the picture-frames and the carpets on the stairs. The windows were cleaned, and the beds were made, and the fires were lighted. These last in every room, for snow and sleet were whirling about in the Square; and the full horror of an average Spring was cutting Londoners to the quick, after hopes had been held out of an abnormal one.

The housekeeper's room in the basement had as good a fire in it as the best; and the butler, who had been abroad with the Family, and had come back in advance to prepare the way for it, was taking a cup of tea there, and chatting over the occurrences during his absence with the lady in possession, Mrs. Protheroe, the housekeeper--a responsible person, to whom it was safe to speak about things, under reserve. One of the things was a thing to the importance of which we couldn't shut our eyes, if true. It threw all other subjects into the shade.

"That's the gentleman, Mrs. Protheroe. You mark my words if it isn't!" And Mr. Elphinstone repeated his words, that they might be better marked, more than once, in the silence that followed.

"I shall be very greatly shocked, Mr. Elphinstone, if it turns out like you think. But we must hope and pray no such a disgrace could happen to the Family."

The old lady, a perfect example of her kind, who had known the Family through two generations, was gravely disquieted provisionally. But such a thing was not to be accepted lightly, whatever it was. Dismiss it or condemn it, certainly! Entertain it, scarcely!

Mr. Elphinstone appeared to revolve something in his mind. It found expression in the words, "It was Michaelmas. Last Michaelmas twelve months. Just a year and a half."

"He and his wife dined once, and then he came down to Royd." In Mrs. Protheroe's speech all things relate to the Family, so there is no need to say whom Mr. and Mrs. Challis dined with.

"Too free and easy, to my thinking. Wife a stoopid sort. Spoken of so afterwards in the Family freely. 'Armless, I should have put it at, myself."

"Received, certainly!" Mrs. Protheroe shows that she anticipates comment on the stupid lady's social drawbacks. But Mr. Elphinstone covers the ground fully.

"No questions were asked," he says. "Subsequently it was elicited Deceased Wife's Sister. Information from Bishop Barham's lady at the Castle."

"But her ladyship had called when in London." The implication was that the Family's ægis, once extended, was not a thing that could be withdrawn without loss of prestige. Mr. Elphinstone can recall, with reflection, incidents bearing on this point.

"In my hearing," he says, "no one but the Family being present, strong opinions tending to liberality received sanction. His lordship the Bishop's lady being referred to as bigoted, Sir Murgatroyd especially exculpating. Parties happening to be other parties' Deceased Wife's Sisters said to be victims of equivocal state of Law. I should say, too--but this, Mrs. Protheroe, is merely opinion--that the voice of her Grace the Duchess had weight, being thrown in the scale on the side of Toleration." Mr. Elphinstone felt pleased with his figure of speech, although he knew it was not original. He was indebted for it to Mr. Ramsey Tomes, to whom he was an attentive listener.

"Her ladyship," said Mrs. Protheroe, "has been predisposed towards her Grace from a child. Addicted, you might almost say. Some do think her Grace's opinions too easy."

"In this case," said Mr. Elphinstone, who wished to pursue his sketch of the status quo, whatever it was, "nothin' applied. Owing, I should say, to the fundamental attitood of Mrs. Challis. Both young ladies, as well as her ladyship, having gone lengths--I assure you, Mrs. Protheroe, having gone great lengths."

The housekeeper was not inclined to admit that she knew less than the butler. "So I have understood," she said, and added nods about more things she knew, but held in reserve. But she would not entirely exclude Mr. Elphinstone. "Miss Sibyl behaved sweet, I must say. But it was just no use at all, any more than a lump of lead."

The butler looked introspective and analytical.

"You have to consider, ma'am," said he, unconsciously borrowing a phrase from Dr. Johnson, "that class-feeling may run high when least expected. Can we blame a lady of her style for refusing to mix? Especially when compliance leads to ructions."

Mrs. Protheroe looked thoughtful, too. "Once to dinner," she said. "Once to an evening. Afterwards excuses. No--Mr. Elphinstone. I'll tell you just how I see it. No lady would ever feel so to undervalue herself--not to the extent of denying herself. Their looks satisfy, personally, and give confidence. But, sought for in Society on behalf of their husbands--no!"

This way of putting the case would bear polishing, no doubt! But when we have said that no woman with any amour propre at all would keep out of brilliant Society on her merits, but might do so rather than be the mere satellite of a distinguished husband, have we improved so very much on Mrs. Protheroe's inexactitudes?

Mr. Elphinstone would take a second cup of tea, thank you! He was determined to sift to the dregs this matter he couldn't shut his eyes to. "I should like, ma'am," said he, "to pursue the sequel with you, having spoken so frank. Allow me! It is impossible for me, although no names are mentioned, to keep going a pretence of ignorance." He dropped his voice. "There is great warmth of feeling in the Family; it cannot be disguised. The Family sometimes forget the presence of the household, and raise their voices. The household may conscientiously withdraw, but the principle continues to hold good that scraps leak out." Mr. Elphinstone seemed to feel a reluctance, creditable in so old a retainer, to confess to so much knowledge of the Family's private affairs, overheard against his will; and his apologies for this knowledge made him prolix. Abbreviated, his narrative told of fiery passages of arms between Judith and her mother and sister; more temperate, but still warm, discussion between the former and her father, and a certain amount of chance phrases from semi-confidential talk between her ladyship and the Duchess, and one or two others. But they all related manifestly to a determination of Judith to marry a gentleman the Family would have none of on any terms. And this not on the score of class-prejudice, nor of ways and means, nor of any personal aversion, but simply because the said gentleman was to all intents and purposes a married man. Having regard to some niceties of social intercourse, or their omission, as between Mr. Alfred Challis and Miss Arkroyd, their frequent correspondence and obvious empressement in each other's society, there could be no reasonable doubt who this gentleman was. Mr. Elphinstone's second cup must have been cold by the time he drank it, so absorbed was he in this narrative.

"I don't see all you do, Mr. Elphinstone, nor hear. Naturally, because of opportunities! But I have seen our Miss Judith and this Mr. Challis together...."

The butler interrupted. "He's been honoured with knighthood, as I understand. Sir Alfred Challis. Doo to literary distinction!"

"Oh, indeed, I didn't know." Mrs. Protheroe was impressed. "Sir Alfred Challis. Well, I should have said, without ever being told, they was going on. And you said she called him Alfred, and said she would marry him?" This referred to the most striking passage of the butler's narrative. Repetition would reinforce it.

"It was exactly that," said he. "I was approachin' the door, and endeavoured to call attention. But Miss Judith, partly not noticing, partly in her 'igh mood, not caring, just went on: 'I should marry Titus if he were divorced,' she was just shouting it out in a tempest. 'I should,' she says. 'Why should I not marry him, when this woman is not his wife?' And then, 'If she is his wife, how dares she refuse to live with him?' And then, 'If she is his wife, how dares she deprive him of his children? Answer that!' It all came very quick. Then Miss Judith, she sees me--just come in--and says to me, a bit quieter: 'No, Elphinstone, don't you go. I'm going.' And sweeps out, white. I asked pardon, but the bell had rung twice. Her ladyship says, 'Never mind, Elphinstone!' Then she sinks back like on the sofa, and says to Miss Sibyl...."

The housekeeper interrupted. "We mustn't call her ladyship out of her name," she said deprecatingly.

"Old 'abit!" says Mr. Elphinstone. "Where was I?... Oh, says to Lady Felixthorpe, 'The girl frightens me.' And then, 'Oh dear!--fancy her making a scene here in the Hotel!' Then Miss Sib ... her ladyship, Lady Felixthorpe, she says to me: 'Can't the people in the next room hear every word through that door, Elphinstone?' As if I knew everything, Mrs. Protheroe!"

"You reassured her ladyship, Mr. Elphinstone?"

"I mentioned that the party in the next room was fouring, and not unlikely unfamiliar with English. Also, if anyone was there they would be audible--all being alike in that respect on the Continent--but in point of fact the suite was vacant." His cup was, too. When he had received another, and said "Thank you," he added: "But that was not the only occasion, by many, Miss Judith made use of the expression 'Titus.'"

From this it may be gathered that the Family, diminished by one of the daughters, had after her wedding fled to the Riviera, and remained until an enjoyable sunshine convinced them--they being English--that it was getting too hot, and also imposed on their credulity to the extent of making them believe Spring had begun in England. So, at this moment, they are en route for Grosvenor Square, somewhere, having sent Elphinstone on ahead, to get the house ready for their arrival. He and Mrs. Protheroe have, therefore, a splendid opportunity for comparing notes, and just before we found them doing so he had remarked that a gentleman whom Mrs. Protheroe would remember two years ago--"play-acting gentleman--friend of Miss Judith's--slight, middle-aged--soft felt hat--talked to himself--smoker--got him?" had turned up at Mentone just before he left, and had renewed his intercourse with the Family.

Thereupon Mrs. Protheroe, who had "got" Challis after some effort of memory, had said uneasily: "I hope that would not be the same gentleman...." And Mr. Elphinstone had asked, "What gentleman?" On which Mrs. Protheroe pleaded, apologetically, guilty to gossip. Perhaps she ought not to have said it. But there, it was only the child, after all. Little Tilley! All nonsense, most likely! Being pressed, she had produced a letter from Cintilla, saying boldly that "Miss Judith's lover had reappeared, and they'd made it up; only her ladyship and Sir Murgatroyd refused to see him." The pretty little ex-dairy maiden, whom a course of spoiling had not improved, had withheld the name of Miss Judith's admirer. Mrs. Protheroe might guess. It was then that Mr. Elphinstone noted his desire that his words should be marked. No doubt Mrs. Protheroe marked them as little as you and I have done in response to like appeals.

However, this April chat, more than ten months after Challis wrote his letter to Judith, to get her to try to whitewash him in Marianne's eyes, will serve to show how the pieces have shifted on the board. For an untold gap in a tale is like the hour of the game of chess you, the spectator, were called away from to speak to Mrs. Smith. When you left, not a piece was lost, and Black had taken the opportunity to castle. When you returned, White and Black had exchanged queens, and heaps of pawns and pieces were smiling sickly smiles upon the floor, and had lost interest in the proceedings, as you had done yourself. Still, you pretended that you could see exactly what had happened, which was fibs. But you recovered interest in the game then, and may do so in the story. However, the intervening hiatus cannot be left an absolute blank.

It was made up, for Challis, of more or less disguised dangling at the heels of Judith Arkroyd, broken by several short excursions, pleasant enough, abroad, and one short, dreary sojourn at his own empty home. This was chosen at the period of Bob's holidays, which were divided by that young man impartially between Wimbledon and Broadstairs. He showed an accommodating, unenquiring spirit in his acceptance of the status quo, as somehow or other right; offering to fight any disputant of his own sex and weight who suggested that his domestic arrangements were exceptional. He silenced controversy by trenchant expressions, such as "You shut up, anyhow!" and went so far once as to tell Tillotson--who had two Camberwell Beauties, certainly, but was in all other human relations an Awful Little Humbug--that Dean Tillotson, his father, and Lady Augusta Tillotson, his mother, only resided together to produce a false impression of concord on the cathedral-town society they were central pivot of. Once out of the public sight, according to Bob, this worthy prelate--of whom he knew absolutely nothing--and his aristocratic wife "went on" like a cat and dog. Morally, of course! Bob admitted, under catechism, that her ladyship was not driven up trees and afraid to come down because the Dean was barking at the bottom; but, metaphorically speaking, he held to his indictment--provisionally, at least, until it should be shown in a fair ordeal of battle that the owner of the Camberwell Beauties could lick its promulgator. Challis ventured to dwell on the unfairness of making the preservation of an unblemished family reputation turn on such an issue, but Bob was deaf to argument. Europe would see, next term, if he didn't give Tillotson an awful licking, and thereby prove his words true. He would have done so last term, only that old fool Spit had caught the combatants in flagrante delicto, and made them write alternate verses of the sixth book of the "Iliad" all through, off the same copy.

Bob's reports of the household at Broadstairs were Challis's only information about Marianne and the little girls, and it appeared from these that his mother had been loyal to her husband in one respect; she had kept back the reasons of their separation from the children. Circumstances had been glossed over--veils drawn. Young folk can be easily duped by guardians and parents, who do not generally scruple--did yours?--to take advantage of their simplicity. As long as his father and mother were satisfied, Bob was content. And as long as his sisters felt in some sort of touch with "at home," through his own holiday visits "at grandmamma's," their inquiries took no very active form. Challis could not ask his boy the questions he longed to ask. How was it possible, for instance, to say to him, "Do Chobbles and Mumps never ask after their Pappy?" He was constantly in dread of saying something that would set the boy's curiosity on the alert. And he was thankful, when the time for school came again, that it was still, so far as he knew, at rest.

But the joy of oblivion, in change of scene and association, grew on him. He left England for the South of France, as we have seen, shortly after Bob departed for Broadstairs the first time, midway in his summer holiday. He wandered about a little in old French towns after Judith returned for her sister's wedding, catching the last half of Bob's Christmas holiday, that youth having spent the first half partly at his grandmamma's and partly in a visit to a school-friend. If you know and understand boys, you will feel no surprise on hearing that this was Tillotson! Bob had a high old time at the Deanery at Inchester to tell his father of when he went to the Hermitage in January. And his spontaneous narratives of the distinguishing features of Inchester and Broadstairs, to the disadvantage of the latter, did more to bring an image of Marianne and her present surroundings to her husband's mind than more carefully prepared statements, substantially true, could have done. Grandmamma was not a stinking old Salvation Army Dissenter, but a properly enrolled member of the Establishment. Nevertheless, Bob's contrast between what he called "her style" and that of the Venerable Dean was full of suggestion to his father, whose imagination could supply the merely academical accuracy needed for a perfect picture.

When Bob went back to school Challis remained at the Hermitage long enough to complete the correction of the proofs of his forthcoming novel for the Spring issue. "The Hangman's Orphan" had been already announced in the press, and only a revise or two was wanting to complete it. He arranged that this should be posted to him at Mentone, where he expected to remain through January. He could wire corrections if needful.

Whether his selection of Mentone for a winter sojourn was the result of a suggestion from Judith or not is of little importance to the story. What does concern it is the question how Challis came to be admitted on the family visiting-list at all when he left his card at the Hôtel de la Paix on their arrival. Remember what Sibyl's report may have--must have--been of the little drama she had distinguished in "Tophet" in the moonlight of last June. Certainly Challis had "left cards" in Grosvenor Square once or twice; had, at Judith's suggestion, been engaged elsewhere when once asked to dinner, but had had no real intercourse with any of the Family, except that time when he was caught and brought into the house by Cintilla. Of course, if Judith's hand had been free, things would have been different. Still, something is needed to account for the position of affairs at Mentone. There was certainly a change.

Our own belief is that the brilliant success of a play of our author's at the Megatherium Theatre had a great deal to do with it.

Nice scruples bow before great booms; and although Sibyl's antipathy, shared to a great extent by her mother, and her father's irresolution before their united forces, were obstacles to Miss Arkroyd's perfect freedom of intercourse with that Mr. Challis who had married his Deceased Wife's Sister, and was living apart from her, they were obstacles of a sort liable to disappear under a sufficiently lofty heap of laurels. Even her Grace of Rankshire, who had condemned Challis off-hand, and recommended that the doors of Royd Hall should be closed against him, softened in the Royal box before the thunders of applause that accompanied the call for the author when the curtain fell on "Aminta Torrington." He wasn't Shakespeare, of course; but, then, he wasn't Ibsen, and what a comfort that was! And one couldn't stand against a popular verdict. "And, after all," said she to Lady Arkroyd, "we probably only know half the story."

"Well, Thyringia," said Lady Arkroyd, thereon, "you know it isn't me that is making the fuss," which was not only bad grammar, but untrue. "If you would say a word to Sir Murgatroyd to influence him, it would have such weight. And then the man could come to a reception or something, and Ju would let me have a little peace. I can't tell you how sick and tired I am of it all."

Whereupon her Grace had attacked the Bart. before the Bishop, to the discomfiture of both; the Bart. because he was really unconscious of any active share in the ostracism of Challis, and only supposed that he was meeting her ladyship half-way; the Bishop because Thyringia seized the opportunity of flouting his lordship on the Deceased Wife's Sister question--trampling on his most cherished episcopal conviction as nothing but a coronet would have dared to do. She chose to ascribe the attitude of Royd towards Challis entirely to his irregular marriage, and "pointed out" that if the legalizing Bill passed next year--"and it would, yes!"--the Bart. would look like a fool. "What a parcel of geese you are," said her Grace before a whole roomful of people, "to suppose the man wants to marry Judith!... Well! he'll have to look sharp about it, anyhow!" The Bishop turned purple; but there!--a Duchess can say exactly whatever she likes.

No doubt the confidence her Grace expressed that the "legalizing Bill" would pass--backed as her opinion was by that of many others--had its fair share of weight. For both Judith's parents, with a probably well-grounded faith that their daughter, if only from self-interest, would do nothing irregular, could not hide from themselves that they would welcome any change that would define the position, and keep the suspected couple permanently apart.

This feeling may well have increased and taken a more heart-felt form when Challis, possibly with the written sanction of Judith--but nothing came out to that effect--made his appearance at Mentone. Lady Felixthorpe and her husband joined the party later. It must have been during their short stay that the little scene occurred so graphically described by the butler to Mrs. Protheroe. This little scene, the news of which reached England a few days before its actors, prepares the story for a change in its conditions. It has to adapt itself to a new state of things--a state three words of Mr. Elphinstone's narrative suffice to show. Judith is speaking of Challis as Titus.

* * * * *

Had the lonely and reserved young widow with the two little girls, who lived with her mother at Broadstairs, and was called by the few who had occasion to call her anything "Young Mrs. Craik"--had she been told that that other woman, whom she hated as a Choctaw hates a Cherokee--to scalping-point--was actually speaking and thinking of the husband she had renounced by the name the pride of her heart in his first great success in authorship had chosen and kept for him and, although less frequent in speech than of old, it was the name her own mind still gave him--would it have added anything to her resentment? Would she have been one scrap more miserable than she was, for knowing it? The story has to report otherwise.

As a matter of fact, Marianne would in a sense have welcomed the knowledge. She had made up her mind to kill her love for the father of her children, and it may be she found it died harder than she expected. Did you, who read this, ever have to kill anything larger than an insect you could flatten out in a trice to a mere blot? You may perhaps have caught some bird, maimed by a sportsman--or sportsbooby--past all hope of rising in the wind--just a scrabbled wreck, good for nothing but for a sportscat to get a little joy from--and may have seen that it would be merciful in you, not a sportsperson at all, but a sentimentalist, to make a quick end of it; and then you may have tried, and found it still had heart in it for a fight for life. Did your sentimentalism make you feel sick, till the last last kick left it collapsed and cooling? Then, were you not glad?

Marianne would have been glad to know that her love for Titus was dead, and the killing of it come to an end. But would it die? There was always the painful doubt. Your little dicky-bird ended on a tiny jerk, and hung limp and chill. Would a love those two young folks brought back memories of, hour by hour, do the like?

More than once, Choctaw as she was, her mind had wavered towards relenting. Once she had actually begun a letter to her husband--not imploring forgiveness for her overstrained anger and jealousy; she was too proud for that sort of thing--but the other sort of thing, the sort that is ready with Christian Forgiveness, the sort that makes the consumption of a good large humble pie a sine qua non, the sort that indulges in a truculent sort of joy over the sinner that repenteth. She was too proud to admit that she had been at all in fault, but just--only just--not too proud to indulge a secret hope that Titus would be magnanimous enough to shut his eyes to her omission. All she wanted was contrition galore and absolution absolute. On those terms she would come back and marshal Mrs. Steptoe and the crew of a new domestic Argo. Only, bygones were to be bygones! She had a dim sense that this expression was to be held to mean that Charlotte Eldridge was to be assoilzied. It was a dim one, because she had no idea of admitting that she had been influenced by Charlotte.

Her mother dissuaded her from sending this letter, if you call it dissuasion to "point out" that Hell-fire awaits those who run counter to your voice of warning. What Challis would have called the "religious hoots" of the worthy old lady took the form of warning her daughter against returning to what Holy Writ denounced plainly as a Life of Sin. She omitted to mention the chapter and verse; but, then, her style, as Bob called it, was one that lent itself to fervour--not to say bluster--rather than verification of references. It was a style that Bob, backed by his father--and Tillotson's, for that matter--could easily sneer at. But it was harder for Marianne to ignore the force of the words-without-meaning that had been thundered at her from her cradle. The well-worn phrases had force in them still for her, and when she burned that letter she had a kind of sacred feeling, like the Northern Farmer when he came away from Church.

It is right to mention, lest any reader should condemn Marianne for too great submission to her mother, that the thunderbolts of hereditary superstition were not the only malign influences she had to bear up against. She never lost touch with Charlotte Eldridge. In fact, Charlotte paid her more than one short visit at Broadstairs, and made the best use of her time in each. Nothing could have exceeded the earnestness of her supplications to her friend to allow her to act as intercessor and mediator, to be the bearer of the olive-branch of peace, except it were the warmth of her exhortations to forgiveness, or the subtle dexterity with which the suggestion of offence still untold weakened the effect of both. It is impossible to enlarge on the merit of overlooking the wrong that has been inflicted on us, without by implication enlarging the area of the wrong itself. Meekness needs something to work with; a buffalo cannot find sustenance from a flower-pot. Charlotte never asked pardon for the offender without contriving to suggest a new offence.

Of course, if Marianne had not been a bit of a Choctaw, the position need never have become so exasperated. But it isn't fair to make her the scapegoat on that account. What a many items of the total imbroglio could have cancelled it, by simply attending to their own non-existence! If, for instance, Judith Arkroyd had kept her eyes to herself, or had never left Challis's hand to do the letting-go--who can say, then, what the exact force of that moonlight adventure in Tophet would have been? Or if that theatrical nonsense had not let witchcraft loose on an easy victim; easy because unsuspicious? Or if Marianne's writing-paper had been the thin sort that goes abroad, eight pages for twopence-halfpenny, instead of that sort the envelope cuts your tongue when you lick it to--Harmood's phraseology, we believe--would not Challis have read the postscript? Think of the difference that would have made!

No!--there is no sense in trying to fix blame; certainly not on either of the principal actors. Blame Judith if you like! But even then, bear in mind that until Challis broke out in that foolish way, Judith had observed all the rules of the game, and was playing fair. Do her justice! Can you gibbet Judith, without affirming that a woman has no right to be beautiful, and very little to take for granted that a man with a still young wife and two children will not credit her with a readiness to assume as a matter of course that he will never imagine that she will suppose he has fallen in love with her?... We hope this is intelligible. More might be added to the same effect, but let it stand.

Judith's father never saw any fault to be found with his daughter's conduct; so why should the story? However, it is true that Sibyl always said that papa was a bat; and her ladyship suggested that, socially speaking, conflagrations might break out all round, and Sir Murgatroyd never notice them until she called his attention to them. When the Duchess said what the story has already reported about Challis and Judith, it only presented itself to him as a sheer joke; his Arcadian mind could not receive the idea of Judith--our Judith!--nourishing a tendresse for ... a married author! It was not the authorship, but the marriage, or marriages rather; for if we considered Marianne null and void, what should we call her residuum? A widower at large, with a doubtful record?

The fact is, the old boy had a fine chivalrous heart behind his occasional absurdities, and any advantage taken of a legal technicality to shuffle out of a deliberate contract would have been branded by him as it deserved. And, although it was quite untrue that he was the maker of the fuss her ladyship disclaimed any hand in, it is certain that he inaugurated a fuss of his own invention after that outbreak of the Duchess, when he heard--to deglutition point--the full story of Marianne's revolt. It had been placed before him some time since in an imperfect form, but he had swallowed barely a mouthful. Now that his wife satisfied the curiosity her Grace's escapade had excited, and gave him full details, he became keen to justify Mrs. Challis, and was for a while secretly intolerant of her husband. He would know all about it; and in spite of his informant's appeal to him to be most careful on no account to say anything to Judith, he seized an early opportunity to get at that young lady's version of the subject.

"Oh dear!--that tiresome woman!" was her spoken response. But the kiss she bestowed on her parent's shaving-area was commiserating, tolerant of the inquiry, not absolutely unamused at the Arcadian simplicity of the kiss. Dear old man, leaving his manures and eleventh centuries and things, to meddle with Us and the World! A kiss that said, "What a shame of mamma to disturb such pastoral tranquillity!" But Judith would keep nothing back, not she! She dropped into the visitor's chair of the Bart.'s sanctum, to tell the tale, throwing her hands in her lap, to lie there till wanted; a sort of despairing submission to lip-boredom to come. "I need not drum through the whole story; it's too silly!" She looked appealingly at her father, who immediately weakened his position of catechist.

"Oh no!--your mother has told me the main facts," said he. And then, perhaps feeling ground lost, added: "At least, I infer so."

"Did she tell you I was supposed to be the heroine of the romance?" Eyes closed for a second on an amused face, reopened to look for the answer. Self-possession perfect!

"Well--yes! She said something of the sort."

"Did she say I was in love with Challis?"

"Certainly not!" Emphatically.

"Well, I don't know! One can't trust one's madre. I shouldn't have been the least surprised."

"Oh--hum--well! Very distinguished man...."

"Oh, I like Challis very much. He's a most amusing companion. I wish that fool of a woman wouldn't make him so miserable."

"I understand she took offence at his showing you...."

"Showing me her letter! Yes--just fancy! Why--the letter was as good as a letter to me. It was nothing but a message to say why she wouldn't come to Royd.... No, really there was nothing else in it.... Well!--something illegible on the back that he had overlooked. And she would listen to no explanation, and went off in a fury, and took the children with her. And he's never seen her since."

"I can't believe she has any claim to the children. Has he taken legal advice?"

"Oh dear, yes! Heaps. But it seems he can do nothing. She was a half-sister of his first wife, you know. If he had married her in Australia, he might, they said, have got some legal remedy in Australia; but even then they thought he would have had a deal of trouble to get at the children. I think he has done wisely to let it alone. Frank says the Bill is sure to pass the Lords this year or next; probably this. Then she'll have to be his wife, whether she likes it or not. I've no patience with such folly."

The Baronet assumed the look of intense profundity political males generally wear in the presence of womankind, suggesting magazines of thought beyond their shallow comprehension. "Some--very--funny--questions," he said, in judicial instalments, "will arise if that Bill becomes Law. Ve-ry funny ones." But apparently too complex or too delicate for discussion with one's daughters. So the Bart. shut them into his soul with the closed lips of discretion, and looked responsible.

Perhaps Judith saw her way to quenching any suspicions anent herself and Challis by parading her unreluctance to talk about him. "I don't know," said she, "that a little trouble is necessarily bad for Challis, with all this success going on. It may save him from becoming odious. Besides, of course, Marianne means to come back to him in the end."

* * * * *

This was about the time of Sibyl's wedding, shortly after the production of "Aminta Torrington." So convincing was Judith's attitude of her detachment from Challis, helped always by his leaving England immediately afterwards, that all suspicion had vanished from the mind of her parents by the time he made his appearance at Mentone; and at that time Sibyl was honeymooning. There had never been anything that could be called a split. And discretion, for some reason, must have been carefully observed by Challis and Judith during this visit, for gossip never mentioned them in the same breath. And the lady's father, in our opinion, was righteously shocked when it came to his knowledge that his daughter and this gentleman, who had been accepting his hospitality as a married man, were to all intents and purposes plighted lovers, and free to wed without let or hindrance. Except, indeed, on the lady's side, an almost solid phalanx of family opposition; and on the gentleman's a previous marriage which was no legal wedlock at all, but which he could not be said to have been disloyal to, for he had never either refused to play the husband nor been guilty of any legal infidelity. It was entirely Marianne who had refused to play the wife.

Lord Felixthorpe, Sibyl's coronet, was the only dissentient in the family circle. "It certainly seems to me," said he, as deliberately as ever, "that either our Legal Acumen, or our Boasted Civilization, or our Moral Sense, or the Marvellous Elasticity of our Political System, or Convocation, or the Higher Socialism, or something equally impressive, must be in a sense defective, when any person not convicted of crime is under compulsion to live single, as long as there is a lady willing to marry him. I say nothing of the case of a friend of ours (whom I do not name for obvious reasons) who says that no lady will accept him. If he were to endeavour to drag an unwilling bride to the altar, the police should be instructed to interpose. But in the case of Challis--if I am rightly informed--my fascinating sister-in-law is ready to accept the situation. Now, although, under the existing Law, one's own Deceased Wife's Sister is excluded from the questionable advantage of becoming one's Legitimate Wife, the most stringent morality has never enrolled someone else's Live Wife's Sister among prohibited degrees of consanguinity...."

"Do say what you mean, Frank, instead of going out of your way to make fun of Will, and talking nonsense!"

"I mean, dearest, that it's too much to expect of any fellow that he's to stand his wife bolting on the plea that the wedding-knot wasn't tied, and lugging away his kids, and refusing to see him, and him not be allowed to marry somebody else."

But William Rufus, who had been slighted by an American beauty, and was gloomy in consequence, shook his head and said: "Can't see it--never shall!" And Sibyl settled the matter. "If he wants to marry anybody else's husband's Live Wife's Sister, let him! Only not mine!"

So it had come about that discord reigned in Grosvenor Square when the Family returned from Mentone. But the outer world knew nothing about it. Mr. Elphinstone and Mrs. Protheroe talked of what they heard to each other, and nothing reached the lower stratum of the household. Conjecture must supply a motive for delay on the part of this betrothed couple: for they must be called so. If they intended to ignore Marianne and defy public opinion, why not do so at once? Was it because no certainty existed that Challis's marriage was invalid? No legal means of dissolving a marriage not recognized by Law seems to exist. It was impossible to make a clean slate and start fair. Who could say that time would be sufficient to calm the family tempest and put the ship in commission so as to be sure of sailing before that Bill was brought forward in the Commons? Suppose it was rushed through, and overtook the wedding! Was Judith's thirst for wedlock intense enough to run such a risk? Was it not, rather, common prudence to wait for the rejection of the Bill, and have a cool year to turn the matter over? Our own impression is that the young lady was not in love enough to say yes to the first question, or no to the second.

Whether Challis's arrangement of his affairs and his whereabouts--always favouring what Harmood would have called "keeping company," while thrusting himself as little as possible on the Family--was in consequence of a definite plan of campaign, arranged with Judith, is not known to this story. There is a suspicion that the attack of influenza that laid him up at Marseilles on November 6 was made the most of, in order that he might shirk the receipt of knighthood in person on the 9th. There is his name among the Birthday Honours of the year; and, as we all know, he is now Sir Alfred Challis. He was able, somehow, to get enough degrees of fever certified to make his presence at the Palace impossible; but whether he knelt to receive them subsequently, or whether they reached him through the æther, like a Marconigraph, we do not know. He had certainly shaken off the "flu" very completely when he came to England after Christmas.

The story is a bit hazy on many points at this period. What made Challis, with all his impatience with what he called the "performing classes," accept a knighthood? One theory--a plausible one--is that Judith ordered him to do so. Not from any idea that her parents or Sibyl would soften towards Challis on that account--much they cared for knighthoods! But she was woman enough to wish to have the World on her side. It might be a snobbish world; but what a big one it is! And what a lot of power one's elbow gets from the sympathy of it! Anyhow, to our thought, Challis, having accepted the honour at Judith's bidding, ought to have overcome his reluctance to conform to usages, and not run his temperature up to 103. As it was, the little thermometer had its way.

He remained abroad, then, until the Easter holiday--which coincided, you see, very nearly with the return of the Family to Grosvenor Square--when he came to Wimbledon for some more Bob. All we want to know about him at this time, and for a little time yet, is that his correspondence with Judith continued, and that during the season in London the two of them contrived to meet very frequently. It was a wonder they managed to steer clear of gossip as cleverly as they did.

But an anxious time was approaching. Suppose that Bill passed!...

Did Challis ever say to himself, to put a finishing-touch on the oddity of his position, "What would it matter? If it did put a barrier between me and Judith, would it not give me back my old home and the kids?" The story can conceive his doing so, and also that his mind would then wander back on his old days ... not always perfect; but still!... and then would shudder at its own brutality, for never asking what of Judith, in that case? What would be left for her? For Challis, though he had speculated a good deal in his writings on the many ways of loving that there are, had scarcely applied his conclusions to himself. Some theorists will have it that no man ever has the slightest consideration for the woman he loves--in one of the ways, mind you!--suppose we say the volcanic way! They hold that it is himself he loves all the time.

However, the Bishop said it was impossible that Bill should pass. And he ought to have known.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us